Not With Haste
by uchiha.s
Summary: Modern AU. It takes two years, a fall in a river, multiple fires, a car crash, stitches, a police chase, and quite a lot of broken glass for Jon to finally touch her. Jonsa.
1. Chapter 1

**Part One**

* * *

 _'And I have filled this void with things unreal,_

 _And all the while my character it steals.'_

* * *

"Maybe what you need is to prove to yourself that you _can_ do something. You know, embrace your own power, and all that crap."

Arya was making a precarious tower of cheese slices and crackers—at age twenty-nine, she was doing the exact same thing she would have done at age nine. Sansa watched with disgust and pride as Arya crammed the entire stack into her mouth, and then chewed vigorously, her cheeks puffed like a chipmunk.

"Like kickboxing?" Sansa suggested dismally. She looked down at her own partly demolished block of cheese, and the empty bottle of wine next to it. She'd have a headache, a dry mouth, and a bloated belly the next day.

Once upon a time, the idea of gorging on wine, cheese, and crackers would have been taboo. So determined to be a picture-perfect wife, so determined to have that Instagram body, Sansa would have daintily sipped her vodka soda, admonishing Arya: _cheese gives you spots,_ and, _no one can outrun a bad diet._ She would have thought anxiously of the pre-cellulite she'd observed on her upper thighs during her routine obsessive inspection of all her imperfections, and turned away from the cheese.

Pre-cellulite, pre-cheese Sansa seemed like a very long time ago at the moment.

Arya let out a loud belch.

"No, _idiot._ Kickboxing in my little studio isn't powerful," she scoffed, flopping back gracelessly onto Sansa's plush white shag rug. "I'm thinking, like, a safari, or traveling round the world staying in hostels, or-"

"Those are things _you_ do. Those are not things that _I_ do," Sansa had pointed out primly.

Arya had looked pointedly between the cheese, the wine, and the frumpy cardigan Sansa was currently hiding herself in. "Point taken," Sansa said loudly as Arya climbed over her, tugging at her split ends. "Fine. Let's say we go traveling in hostels, or whatever-" she began, but Arya stopped her.

"No no no, there's no 'we.' This has got to be you. If 'we' do something exploratory together, it'll just be me doing all the planning and heavy lifting, and you'll be there complaining it's too hot, or whining, or scrolling through Ramsay's Facebook. If _anyone_ goes with you, that's what'll happen, and you know it."

Arya had a knack for baldly stating things that Sansa would have preferred to be left unsaid.

Her little sister sat up again in front of her, looking remarkably like a puppy for someone who could bench three times her own weight. "You've got to do this _yourself,_ Sansa! You've got to do something totally un-you, totally by yourself; something where you've got nothing and no one but yourself to rely on!

"You're not yourself right now anyway; I barely recognize you. You don't even have that old fake confidence you used to have anymore. You can't make any decisions on your own; you're convinced you aren't capable of anything. You need to remind yourself of your own badass-ness. You've got to move on from Ramsay, and this is how!"

Arya was kneeling before her, her big dark eyes pleading. Sansa felt a rush of gratitude and guilt. Through all of this crap, few had stuck by her: even Brienne was getting sick of her shit. "By the way," Arya added kindly, "you've got cheese in your hair."

* * *

Traveling abroad was out: divorcing Ramsay had more or less cleaned out her funds, save for her inheritance money, which she refused to touch. No pair of shoes or fabulous handbag—her greatest loves in life—had ever spurred her to touch that money, and she had no intention of starting now. The affordable compromise, she had decided, was camping. In her flat, with running water and WIFI, camping had seemed charmingly un-Sansa.

Now she was here, in a forest very, very far from any sign of mobile signal, weighed down by all of the camping equipment she had borrowed from Arya, Brienne, and her weird 'uncle' Petyr, who wasn't actually her uncle and was always giving her stuff.

In fact, it was Uncle Petyr, a successful barrister, who had helped her through the extremely complicated divorce proceedings. Accepting Uncle Petyr's help to escape Ramsay hadn't felt good, but had seemed necessary at the time.

Ever since then she had felt both beholden to him and defensive about the whole ordeal. He had refused to accept payment, insisting that they were 'family,' but Sansa, who was quite familiar with being looked upon with lust, thought that perhaps his motives had not been so pure.

Using Petyr to run from Ramsay had left her with a nebulous debt to the man, and the very sort of power imbalance she had been trying to get away from in the first place—the very sort of power imbalance that had crippled her with Ramsay. Grieving the sudden loss of both her parents and eldest brother had launched Sansa into Ramsay's arms, and the simultaneous failure of the little boutique she had had hadn't helped matters. Ramsay had been her savior at the time, and every bad thing he did to her just felt like her payment to him.

At any rate, Petyr had somehow learned that she was camping, and had lent her a fancy headlamp— _why_ , in the name of god, did he own something like this?—and the thing took up nearly half her damn backpack.

"A flashlight and a rubber band would do just the same thing," Brienne had said skeptically, when she and Arya had been helping Sansa pack. The blonde had held up the headlamp disdainfully. "This is for spelunking."

"You won't even be near any caves. It'll only weigh you down," Arya had agreed.

"Good," Sansa had said fiercely, grabbing it and stuffing it in her backpack anyway, caught up in a rush of spite-filled energy. "It'll burn more calories. I've got to get this weight off."

"You've got to get a _new body image_ , more like," Arya had grumbled darkly, which had spurred a shouting match that, as usual, only Brienne could break up.

Now she was cursing herself. Calories or none, the thing was bloody heavy. And as it was Uncle Petyr's, she knew it had to be quite costly, so she couldn't just ditch the damn thing.

The park was called Winterfell. When she'd pulled up to the sign this morning in her cherry-red two-door, the name had seemed like a good omen to Sansa. Winter had always been her favorite season, and as it was September now, the leaves were just becoming tinged with autumn, signifying the approach of winter. It had seemed auspicious—hopeful, even.

 _Things won't always be total shit_ , she'd thought almost brightly, as she had swung out of her car and faced the entrance to the woods, with the mountain looming above it. _At least winter is coming._

That had been three hours ago.

Now the woods buzzed and swarmed around her, and she was sweating, her eyes stinging with a mix of sunscreen and sweat, and her back ached, and she might also be crying—she wasn't totally sure. Why would she be crying? It was stupid to cry. She really was so stupid.

Oh, and as the icing on the shit-cake, today was the one-year anniversary of her separation from Ramsay.

A whole fucking year later, here she was: fat, broke, jobless, and lost and crying in the woods.

This was not precisely how she had pictured her mid-thirties looking.

In the movies, she thought furiously as she swung a stick at the plants in her way, women had it _so_ easy. Strength and self-worth came so quickly. Within a month they could leave their abusive husband and completely rebuild themselves and their life. Did movie writers not realize how much money it cost to do that?

She, by contrast, had needed the help of her dead mother's very rich, very creepy friend, and had spent the subsequent twelve months crying, forgetting to wash her hair, and spending any remaining cash on an extremely expensive therapist, who each week told her that there was nothing wrong with being angry at Ramsay, and then tactfully handed her a box of tissues.

It was like her identity, her self-worth, had been a very tall but tottering tower of Jenga pieces, very tall but lacking any foundation, and then people had just started taking away from her. Ramsay had been the last to take from her before she had collapsed completely.

She had gone from being Sansa Stark—the prettiest girl in the room, the girl whose future was bright and sunny, the girl who had over three thousand friends on Facebook and who spent every Sunday Instagramming her fabulous brunches in cute outfits—to being Sansa Bolton (her name had not yet changed on her legal documents).

Sansa Bolton was...this blobby crying thing who had suddenly come to hate romantic comedies, who no longer gave a flying fuck about shoes, who had almost no friends, and who now avoided having her picture taken as if the camera really could steal her soul.

And now she was a very sweaty blobby crying thing wandering the woods. She hated the woods. She hated nature. She hated camping.

Why was she doing this again?

Initially, she had had visions of herself having some sort of Eat-Pray-Love-type of epiphany out in the woods. She'd seen herself looking out wistfully on a cliff face, in perfectly coordinated athletic gear from Sweaty Betty. She had pictured lying in a spacious tent, surrounded by candles, writing deep, thoughtful, life-changing things in her cute journal.

"If you bring candles into your tent, you'll burn your tent down, not to mention asphyxiate on the smoke, you idiot," Arya had quipped, dumping the bag of Anthropologie candles out of her backpack. "And you need this room for your bedroll."

She had definitely _not_ pictured this: her thighs chafing, her eyes stinging, her hair sticking to her temples and neck. How did she already smell bad? She had showered just this morning!

Her mood swung back and forth as she traipsed through the forest and contemplated what Brienne and Arya had told her about finding a place to set up camp sooner rather than later. She'd got angry, and told them off for being so condescending, and snottily informed them that she'd done plenty of research on the internet, thankyouverymuch, and that she already knew _all_ about camping.

Of course, she _had_ done her research—she wasn't a complete idiot—but it had all been bookmarked on her mobile, and now the pages wouldn't load without any signal.

So caught up in her inner ranting, she nearly walked over the edge of a cliff overlooking the river.

Sansa let out a scream and grabbed onto a tree before she skidded downward. She watched a few pebbles that she'd kicked up fly over the edge, and it took them a rather long time to hit the rocky, frothing waters below.

With the adrenaline coursing through her, her head felt hot and buzzing, yet strangely clear at the same time. She sank back onto her arse, her thighs trembling. She'd not been paying attention, and had nearly walked over the edge.

 _A metaphor!_ she had realized brightly. Perhaps there would be an Eat-Pray-Love-type of epiphany after all.

Even this far above the water, she could feel the cool air from the spray of the river. She decided she was going to walk along the edge of that river, on the lower banks, and feel the cold water between her toes. Her whole body was damp with sweat at the moment and nothing sounded better than just sinking into clean, icy water.

By the time she made it down to the lower banks, she was sweaty but exhilarated, and her back ached, and her lungs were raw. She unlaced her boots and peeled off her socks, and, not thinking, she stupidly set forth to stand in the water. She picked her way through the shallows, and stood on a mossy rock, so that the water was rushing over her feet. She looked back and realized she had nearly crossed the river.

The cold water on her hot, aching, sweaty feet felt better than sex, and yet, as soon as she thought this, she began to laugh hysterically.

She might say she'd not had sex in a year.

But then, she also might say she'd never actually had sex at all.

Of course the cool water felt better than sex. Everything that did not hurt felt better than sex.

She laughed until her sides ached at this thought, laughed until she was crying. Sobs that were far uglier and deeper than any that came out during therapy or wine and cheese binges erupted from her now.

They were a choking, gasping sort of soul-deep expulsion of grief: grief for all of the time that had passed, all of the wrong choices she had made, all of the things that she could not undo, and all of the things that she should have been.

It would have been a perfect moment of epiphany—the absurdity and drama of it—except that she heard a twig snap, and it shocked her. Her bare feet didn't have the greatest footing on the slippery, mossy rock on which she stood, and she began to slip. "Oh, shite," she heard a deep, soft voice say.

She startled and looked to her right, and on the banks there stood a very concerned-looking man with dark hair pulled back into a low bun. He was wearing what should have been a truly unfortunate khaki uniform, except he was sort of making it work. She was just thinking that she ought to inform him that man buns were one hundred percent _over_ when she finally slipped and fell.

* * *

There was always at least one. What was it about camping that made people think they were going to 'find' themselves?

Jon had wearily watched the girl pick her way out into the river. Even from afar it had been clear she was in hysterics. He'd spotted her earlier, and it had taken a decent amount of work for him to find his way to her. He'd parked his truck hastily and had to hoof it the rest of the way to the bank, with Ghost tailing him closely. A sense of panic had driven him: he strongly doubted that the girl could swim, and the river was strong—far stronger than most people seemed to understand. He'd seen that river do some serious damage in his time as a park ranger.

She was now standing on a rock, laughing and sobbing like a loon. Jon decided it would be best to wait for her to finish...whatever the hell she was doing...before he called out to her and warned her. The girl clearly had never been camping before—and with the mental way she was acting, he wasn't entirely sure she'd ever been outside before, either.

But, like a young doe, she heard something crunch under his boots, and startled.

When she turned to look at him, her copper hair fanned out and caught the last bits of sunlight, and for one horrible moment his heart sang with perfect agony. Across the bank their gazes locked.

 _Ygritte._

But the eyes were different, and Ygritte would have known better than to stand barefoot on a river rock, anyway.

And then the girl slipped and fell into the river.

* * *

The way her pack exploded was truly spectacular. Tent, tin can, knickers: all of it seemed to magically spring forth from her pack and scatter among the river rocks. She was also pretty sure she had broken her arse.

She sat dazed, in the water, feeling it rush over her shoulders, wondering if she was dead, when she heard some loud swearing.

Man-bun was walking along the rocks over to her with a sureness and ease that seemed like magic. The mossy, slippery rocks might as well have been flat gravel under his boots. He seemed like a god—like he could walk upon water.

Stars winked before Sansa's eyes.

She was pretty sure she'd broken her bum.

Could one break one's bum? Was that possible?

And now Man-bun was crouching on the rock before her, silhouetted by the dying sun, and she had never seen someone look so beautiful. He had dark, warm eyes, and strong hands, and a pretty mouth—just shy of being too pretty—and he was looking down at her, seemingly edged in gold by the sunlight. Growing up she had loved fairy tales more than anything and right now it felt a bit like she was in one. She was a damsel in distress, and he was her knight, coming to rescue her.

 _My hero,_ she thought warmly.

"Your stuff's going to float away. You'd better get up and pick it up," Man-bun said, _so helpfully_ , and the spell was abruptly broken.

This was the real moment of epiphany: she was sitting with a possibly-broken tailbone in a river in the middle of the forest, her expensive camping equipment—none of it actually hers—scattered about the river, all of it likely ruined, and some random man-bun was looking at her like she was mentally challenged. Worse yet, she'd actually had the audacity to think of him as some sort of knight in shining armor.

She was always the fool, always broken, always running from the fists of one man to the arms of another.

This was, if there ever was one, a wakeup call.

"Oh my god," she blurted out, and found herself covering her face. She knew her eyes were puffy, and now she was completely soaked. How must she look? No wonder he was looking at her like she'd lost her mind.

"I'll help you," he said with no small amount of resignation. He whistled, and an enormous dog—it looked like a wolf—leapt from the banks and dove into the river. Sansa would have been terrified of the dog, except that it reminded her precisely of one she had had growing up: her beloved Lady. The dog resurfaced, its jaws locked around a pair of her knickers.

They weren't even nice ones.

Maybe she could just sink under the water and float away and never see Man-bun ever again.

But alas, she must move on.

In strained silence, soaked and weak, she picked about the river, snatching up everything that had come out of her pack. Man-bun and his dog helped her.

"You don't need to help me," she told him when she reached the stony banks, unable to quite meet his eyes, as she dumped Uncle Petyr's headlamp on top of her bedroll, which was now soaked. The enormous dog was peering interestedly at it.

"It's...my fault," the man said without much conviction, but the matter was clearly closed anyway. He was likely some sort of park ranger, she realized, stealing glances at his uniform—and the lean muscle moving beneath it—as they worked. He was perhaps her age, perhaps a few years older, and his hands and forearms were heavily scarred.

In moments they'd retrieved everything. And now it was getting dark, and everything she had on her was completely soaked. Including her mobile.

Not that she'd had any signal here, anyway.

And she was at least four hours away from her car.

On the banks, she turned to face him. Her mother had raised her to have good manners, and she was ashamed that she'd forgotten them. If she had nothing else, she ought to at least be polite. Humbled, she held out her hand to him.

"Thanks for your help. Obviously, I am a total camping pro," she said wryly, as his large, scarred hand enveloped hers. "I'm Sansa."

"Jon," said Man-bun. Sansa had to stop herself from grinning. _Can I just call you Bun, though?_

He was still peering at her with concern, like he wasn't entirely sure she could even walk on her own. "You're going to freeze with these wet things. Do you know how to build a fire?" His voice was hesitant, halting. He was trying not to insult her.

 _You've got to do this yourself, Sansa!_ Arya's words came back to her.

"Y-yeah," she said now, though it took her whole being not to just burst into tears and launch herself into his strong, capable arms.

She'd never really trusted herself. She'd never really thought she was capable of more than putting on pretty dresses and taking pretty pictures.

She'd been a tottering tower of Jenga pieces, built of nothing but compliments and 'likes' on Instagram.

She needed to rebuild herself again.

"You actually know how to build a fire?" he confirmed now, eying her skeptically. He crossed his arms over his chest.

"Okay, fine," she shot back. "I don't know how to build a fire, not _precisely_ , but I probably can figure it out. I've read about it."

Fire-building was among the things she had so dutifully researched and bookmarked on her mobile. She thought she remembered the main bits.

"Or I can show you before Ghost and I take off," Jon suggested. "The nights get cold here."

Sansa held her chin up with as much dignity as she could possibly muster, given the circumstances.

"That would be helpful," she said levelly. "Thank you."

"Do you have your campsite chosen?" Jon asked, as Sansa crammed her sopping wet things into her pack. Sansa felt her face flush. "That would be a no," he confirmed under his breath, stalking further up the bank.

"I've got it," she said loudly, to his back. Jon paused. His wolf—er, dog—was staring plaintively at her, his head cocked. She bit her lip, feeling defensive, but that quickly melted away as she suddenly saw herself as he must see her: an inept, emotional girl being cruel to him simply for trying to help her. "Seriously, sorry for taking up your time," she added quickly. "I'm a novice, yeah, but I'll figure it out."

Jon looked back over his shoulder at her.

The girl had clearly been crying—for about two years, by the look of things—and her hands were shaking as she attempted to fit a ridiculous-looking headlamp (clearly not hers) into her backpack.

 _Dammit._

"This is no time to be a hero," he warned her. Jon himself had been told this very phrase more times than he could count in his life, and even as the words rolled off his tongue he felt a strange connection to her. Standing there, sopping wet and clearly upset, her soul was familiar to him. _Forgive yourself… For whatever it is you think you've done wrong, for however you think you've failed, just forgive yourself,_ he wanted to tell her, as he often wished he could tell his younger self.

She smiled, but it was less of a smile and more of a painful stretching of her pale lips. She looked exhausted, ghostly, like the life had been bled from her.

"I'm obviously no hero. But I've got this," she said, more like she was speaking to herself than to him. Ghost looked a little unconvinced, but Jon knew a stubborn will when he saw one. It took one to know one, after all.

"Alright..."

"But you were right; I don't know how to build a fire," she admitted hastily, "So if you could just sort of…run through the basic principles," she continued, fidgeting.

"Well, you won't want to build it right here. Let's find you a campsite," Jon said gruffly, turning away from her.

Ghost regarded her with ears pricked with interest, and Sansa flashed him a hopeful smile. Ghost waited for her to reach him, and then the dog walked dutifully by her side. It was, to say the least, a little flattering. "He likes you," Jon observed as they picked their way back into the forest.

"Probably now that I smell like the woods," Sansa deduced wryly.

"Or the river, at least," Jon shot back, from up ahead. He had been teasing her, but with his back to her, and with his gruff tone, it had been hard to tell. Even as her embarrassment peaked she was warmed by his kindness and his stilted efforts to make her feel more at ease.

For a few minutes they trekked up a steep hill in silence, which she now realized was a foothill of the small mountain looming over the entire park. She was embarrassed by the growing stitch in her side. She had never been this out of shape in her life.

"Here's your spot. It's a nice clearing, still close to the water, and the ground is flat," he explained as they finally came to a grove, surrounded by tall evergreen trees.

Sansa dropped her pack, feeling tears spring to her eyes.

As soon as she had stepped into the clearing, she had felt that she had crossed some imaginary line. Although she had never before been camping in her life, although she could hardly remember the last time she'd even been in the woods, she felt like this place belonged to her, and she to it.

 _I'm home._

Jon was staring at her warily. "Alright?" he prompted, in a tone that suggested he really, really wanted her to say yes.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good," she said, her voice growing stronger.

And in fact it was the truth.

"…Right. Well, first we'll want to collect material for the fire. We're looking for pieces of kindling: small twigs and bark that look dry. Then we'll get your fuel wood," he instructed. "You can set up camp there, after you've built your fire."

They collected kindling and wood in relative silence, save for when Jon had some instructive point. Ghost even helped, staying by Sansa's side and carrying branches and twigs in his jaw.

When they had collected everything, they knelt in the dirt as Jon showed her how to start the fire. He was so matter-of-fact about it that she forgot her shame and embarrassment for the time being.

He just wanted to help her, and he wanted nothing in return.

It was truly dark when smoke began to issue from the little pile of kindling and wood, and Sansa let out a cry of delight. "I DID IT!" she squealed. "Look, that is a proper fire!"

Jon tried not to laugh at her.

"...Right. And you know how to set up your tent?"

He was still looking at her like she was part lunatic, part child.

"I can figure it out. Go home, or go save some other first-time camper—I've got it," she reassured him, buoyed by her success.

He peered at her skeptically and she felt her face grow warm. She was suddenly too aware of everything: too aware of the fact that her deodorant had clearly not held up, too aware that he was an extremely handsome man saving her. She looked away, hoping he couldn't tell how flushed her face was, and she heard him shift forward, getting ready to stand.

"It can be a little eerie at night, but these woods are safe. My cabin's just down that way, at the bottom of the hill. If you do run into any real trouble, I'm not far. Try to hang your food out of reach and, whatever you do, don't sleep in the clothes you cooked in."

They got to their feet. It was an uncomfortable moment. The fact that Jon had witnessed such an emotional episode for her hung between them, connecting them yet also drawing attention to the distance between them.

She had not been a dainty damsel in distress for him to swoop in and save—she had been a woman in the middle of uncontrollable grief, and she was keenly aware that she was too old, and no longer pretty enough, to get away with such absurd displays.

"Thanks, really. For everything."

They were silent. Jon sensed that Sansa wanted to say more. He could see her struggling, and he knew it was most courteous to give her time to speak, though he feared she might launch into a tear-filled speech. _Anything but that,_ he prayed. He'd never been very good with tears.

When she looked up again, though, her eyes were bright, as blue as the center of a flame, and her coppery hair caught the light, and his breath was stolen away again. "I used to run my own business," she said now, taking him by surprise. "I tend to forget that I actually am capable of doing things. I'm sure it looks like I'm a complete idiot, but I'm not. So don't worry about me. I'm not..." she paused, searching desperately for her words, "...I'm not helpless."

"I didn't say you were helpless," he replied. "I just didn't think you knew how to build a fire. …Well, good luck, then."

His hand twitched: he had been about to cuff her on the shoulder, and had realized, a beat too late, that it would be odd to do such a thing. He saw her bright blue eyes take in that tiny, restrained motion. _Oh, fuck it._ He'd always been awkward, especially around women.

Without another word, he left abruptly, inwardly cringing.

Ghost lingered, and she couldn't help but scratch the enormous dog behind his ears. He nuzzled against her leg, and then bounded after Jon into the darkness.

* * *

Jon got back to his cabin, still filled with misgivings that he told himself were misplaced. In spite of Sansa's strange crying-laughing, and that epic spill into the river, it had quickly become obvious that she was sharp. She had quick, capable hands, and had caught on quickly. It had taken almost no time to show her how to build a fire.

She was clearly clever and competent. She would be fine, even if she were a first-time camper.

He told himself, repeatedly, not to worry.

Jon made himself a small dinner and watched, through the little window over the sink in his kitchen, as the sky turned murky. Then, rain was lashing against the windows, and Ghost was pacing fretfully, pausing every few moments to look at him reproachfully. Jon scowled back at Ghost and continued about cleaning up his dishes, even as the rain pounded harder on the roof.

But it was one thing to be a first-time camper—even a very clever one. It was quite another to be a first-time camper in an epic storm.

 _She'll be fine_ , he insisted.

He was always being told that he had a white-knight complex, and this was, he told himself, a perfect example. There was absolutely no need to go save her—the worst that could happen was the girl would be a bit wet and uncomfortable.

Her camping pack would be a little heavier in the morning, and she'd have to troop back to her car, hungry and aching from sleeping on the ground, but then she'd go back to what was undoubtedly a glossy London life.

She had a look of money about her—old money—and Jon's situation was such that he had come to be able to recognize such things at quite an early age. Once upon a time it had made him burn with jealousy, but time, experience, and his career in Afghanistan, had peeled away that gnawing insecurity, leaving him with the core of who he was.

For all of his jealousies as a child, he had never really wanted money, just love. It had taken Ygritte to really come to terms with this, and once awash in Ygritte's love, he had stopped caring about money and status at all.

 _Ygritte._ He still had Ygritte's things lying about, and luckily the only people who ever saw the inside of this cabin were people who knew him and therefore knew, intimately, just what he had lost.

People always told widowers and widows to move on, that it was what the other person would want, that they had plenty of life left, and so on, but no one had bothered to tell this to Jon. It was just as well: these words would have been wasted. Jon had not altered his life by his grief; rather he had continued living in just the same way, only his days were a little darker, his nights a little longer.

To Jon, 'moving on' would look no different than how he lived his life now. What was he going to do, take a bloody pottery class? No, he had had his one great love. He'd met his soulmate, and the ten years that they had had together had been more perfect than most people got in fifty years of marriage. He felt she had been taken too soon, but he could not measure the amount of time that would have been enough.

Maybe seeing Sansa's red hair was making him think of Ygritte again. For a moment, with her back turned to him, he had almost been able to make himself believe she was back: like being on a stopped train and having another train pass beside yours, you can almost fool yourself into thinking that your own train is the one moving.

He had known, however, that it was impossible. Jon was above all practical and knew that had not been and could not be Ygritte. He wasn't one to fall prey to illusions and wishes. But to let himself believe it, just for that split second, had been so tantalizing.

It was why he never drank, and refused to have alcohol in the cabin. One night after Ygritte's passing, he'd gone out with old army friends and had unintentionally become thoroughly drunk. The oblivion that had followed, however short, and however painful later on, had been so seductive that he had privately and immediately sworn to never drink again. The prospect of having some peace from missing Ygritte had been a siren song that he knew he lacked the strength to resist forever, and too many nights alone in his cabin, with no life purpose other than to look after the woods—a mindless endeavor, most of the time—would eventually wear him down.

"Don't tell me you're still whinging about that girl," he snapped at Ghost, who was whimpering at the door. Most of the time, Ghost was curled up at the fire, and could not be pulled away from his cosy spot unless meat was promised. "It's just a bit of rain and wind. The worst that'll happen is she'll be wet and unhappy, and she was already wet and unhappy," he added, feeling strangely defensive.

Jon got himself ready for bed. Fastidious in his routines—he had learned so in the army—he carefully flossed and cleaned his teeth, and folded and hung his clothes properly, and turned out the lights and got into bed. Ghost stood in the doorway of the bedroom, staring at him balefully, as Jon tried to get comfortable.

A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the room like daylight, and then a crack of thunder shook the cabin. Jon thought of dead branches falling, of tents being torn away in the wind.

"Fine," he snarled at Ghost, as he threw himself out of bed. "Fine. We'll go check on the girl."

* * *

Sansa was rather glad that Jon had not witnessed her eleven attempts to put together her tent, but it didn't matter how long it had taken her. Now she was inside her tent, cozied against the pouring rain and hammering thunder.

She ought to have been scared but, perhaps, it was this little grove's strange power: she felt as though she were being held tenderly, in a way she had not been touched since she was a child.

Sleeping alone was still a luxury and a relief. And yet, at the same time, it was a gnawing emptiness, too. She hated herself for how she missed the feel of a man's body pressed up against her, hated that she ached for the symbolic presence of Ramsay, even as she shuddered at the thought of someone ever touching her again.

The sleeping bag, however, was better than she had expected. She was wrapped up in it tightly, protected from the chill and from the rain, and somehow it was more comfortable than her bed in her flat. She felt safer, out here in the wild and wrapped up in her sleeping bag, than she did in her flat.

A kind of peace overtook her. She hadn't expected it, but the exhaustion of the day—no, of the past decade—seemed to come over her in the most satisfying weight.

Here she was, mostly fine.

She had got plenty of help, of course, but there was nothing wrong with that. She had asked for help and gotten it and now she was in her own tent that she had set up herself, her belly full of food she had cooked herself, and she had, for the first time, no wish to crawl through Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, looking for mentions of Ramsay. He seemed, from this magic place, totally inconsequential to her. What he did, where he went, whom he dated: none of these had any meaning to her life.

All of her life, she had been told she was beautiful, and as a little girl, it had been mostly all she had cared about. Arya had been the clever one, and Sansa had been the pretty one. When they had been children, even teens, she had felt superior to Arya, and then, as they had finished university and started their own lives, the balance had abruptly shifted.

She had suddenly become keenly aware of her own frivolity, of the silliness of her fashion degree, of how much she relied on men to take care of her. At university she had been attached to Joffrey; even as he antagonized and humiliated her she had sought his approval desperately, and it had taken shamefully long for her to realize just how toxic he was to her.

Then she had opened her boutique, which had truthfully only been possible due to her father's fortune. Then her parents and Robb had died, and running the boutique had become her life. And when that had gone belly-up—because the last thing London needed was yet another boutique with a tiny selection of trendy but costly and ubiquitous clothing—she had devoted her life to Ramsay, and in return he had ripped her apart both mentally and physically.

The after-school specials and the adverts on the underground always taught you that the abused women often had no way out, and Sansa had looked upon those adverts and felt like a fraud, with her expensive clothes—purchased by Ramsay's money—that covered up the bruises and scrapes. She'd never been able to tell anyone the real extent of what he had done, mostly because she had been so ashamed. With her inheritance and means, she could have left at any time.

So why hadn't she left?

Most nights, the question, _'why didn't I just leave?'_ could keep her up all hours, but on this night, for some reason, the question seemed silly. She had been so young when she had fallen into her relationship with Joffrey, and the resultant shame of that relationship had started a terrible cycle that she hadn't found any escape from until now.

Everyone else in her family was doing more with their lives, but she had stayed the pretty little rich girl.

But now, she'd managed to set up her tent and cook her food, and she was here now.

 _You're a slow learner,_ she told herself, _but you do learn._

 _You did leave, eventually._

And with a yawn, she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Ghost hopped into the passenger side of Jon's pickup truck eagerly, and Jon hastened into the dry warmth of the car as the rain pounded down. It was raining so hard that he couldn't even see the end of his drive where it met the road.

"This is all a big waste," he informed Ghost as he started the truck. Ghost was peering into the rain diligently, and Jon rolled his eyes and pulled onto the road.

He drove slowly up the hill, squinting into the inky darkness, trying to gauge where he was in relation to her campsite. Maybe she wasn't even there anymore. Maybe she'd gone home, back to her London life. Maybe she had given up on the woods.

He should have known better than to take his eyes off of the road.

When he looked back, he saw the ghostly figure of a deer on the road, and without thinking, without even knowing what he was doing, Jon slammed on the brakes and felt the truck swerve off the road and into the darkness.

* * *

 _Disclaimer: Game of Thrones and its characters do not belong to me._


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two**

* * *

' _You saw my pain, washed out in the rain,_

 _Broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins._

 _But you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart,_

 _And you knelt beside my hope torn apart.'_

* * *

CRASH.

Sansa shot up, her heart pounding. Her shaking hands fumbled for the flashlight as she held her breath, waiting for that horrific crash to happen again.

But she heard nothing. After a long time, she poked her head out of the tent, squinting into the woods.

There was a light, somewhere over the hill, but it wasn't moving. It could be anything.

Sansa crawled back into the tent, her heart pounding, but until she knew what had caused that noise, and what that light was, she knew she wouldn't be able to relax.

Minutes later she peered out again, and told herself she'd just take a look and see what it was.

She wished fervently for a man, any man—even Ramsay. _There's nothing worse in these woods than him,_ she thought, as she had so often thought when attached to his side. _He'll protect me because he's the worst thing there is._

And yet… She found herself reaching for her boots. She'd already faced Ramsay, and she was alive.

 _There's nothing worse in these woods than Ramsay._

 _And I survived Ramsay._

She walked out into the rain and crested the hill. Within seconds, she was soaked. She felt like an idiot—she should have changed into her clothes. At least then she'd have the rest of the night to let them dry. Now her pajamas were soaked, and her hair and blanket were too.

The ground was slippery and treacherous. Sansa stumbled down the hill almost helplessly, pulled along by wet leaves and gravity, and as she approached the bottom—the ravine—she realized what had caused that noise and that light.

It was a pickup truck that had rolled off the road, violently, and was now turned upside-down, its headlights casting beams of blinding, misty light into the shadows of the trees.

Deep gashes were torn through the land where the truck had rolled down from the road. She heard whimpering, and any thoughts of fear went flying out of her head. Sansa stumbled and scrabbled through the mud and leaves to get to the truck.

The passenger side was open, and there was a flash of white: Ghost nearly mowed her down as he slipped out of the truck, then ran to the other side of the car with a bit of a limp. Panic set in as Sansa followed him and clicked on her flashlight, feeling infinitely grateful that she'd brought it.

Jon was a shadow inside the truck: he was unconscious, suspended by the seatbelt still holding him upside-down, his face smeared with blood that was inky in the darkness.

"J-jon!" she called in a strangled voice as she smacked her hand against the door. She couldn't get the damn thing open. It was jammed shut.

Sansa's stomach gave a lurch of horror. The woods were enormous—even if she could call an ambulance right now, it would take ages to get it here.

She froze. If she tried to help him, she ran the risk of injuring herself, and injuring him further. If she tried to run and get help, they might arrive far too late.

Arya was meant to be in these situations, not her. Arya was the clever one. Sansa was just the pretty one.

But Jon might die.

What had he even been doing, anyway, driving in this rain? The idea that he might have been checking on her—the road would have taken him close to her campsite—floated through her mind, but she quickly dismissed it. Helpful and patient as he had been, it had been all too clear that he had been desperate to rid himself of her.

And something about that notion had made her respect him more. Sansa knew from a lifetime of experience that no matter what, she was a pretty girl, and most men were very easily captivated by pretty girls. They would do anything for pretty girls. But Sansa also knew that Jon had not helped her because she was a pretty girl. He had helped her because she had needed help, and had asked for it.

Sansa stared, trembling, at the truck door, suspended by her own helplessness.

Every single second that she did nothing was a second lost.

Jon might die.

There was no time to freeze, no time to find someone more capable. She drew in a deep breath and stepped forward. She had to at least try.

Jon might die.

The driver-side door was jammed shut, but the truck was tilted so severely that trying to enter from the passenger side—where Ghost had come from—was impossible. She could try breaking the glass of the window, but the force might roll the truck again, and Jon would be crushed.

She circled round the truck helplessly. "Think, you _idiot!"_ she told herself, her voice choked and hoarse in the rain.

The ground was so uneven that part of the bed of the truck was raised, creating a space underneath it. Sansa crouched down, and the idea came to her quite suddenly: she had a vision of a pickup truck's back window. Sometimes, they opened manually.

If she could crawl under the truck and get inside that way, she might not have to break any glass. But what if the truck shifted while she was under the bed?

It would crush her.

But Jon might die.

She circled the truck once more, but the passenger side was impossible: the door was jammed into the earth, and she feared that it was the only thing holding the truck in place. She'd never be able to get through the opening as it was now.

The only thing to do was do it: to go beneath the truck.

A strange calm settled over her.

The sounds of the rain, the thudding of her own heart: these became background details, as the space between the truck bed and the ground sharpened into perfect clarity before her.

She stuffed the flashlight down the front of her pajamas, so that it was trapped inside her bra, and thought, absurdly, of Uncle Petyr's headlamp. It would have been useless here, of course—there was barely enough space for her to crawl in as it was.

Ghost seemed to understand that she was about to undertake a difficult task, for he stopped pacing and calmly sat next to her as she dropped to the ground and began wiggling into the space. The ground was slick with mud and leaves, and sticks were jabbing into her skin as she went. She noticed these sensations in a detached sort of way, as the path of light from her flashlight shook and bobbed with her movements.

The back window came into view. It was a sliding panel, just large enough for her to fit through, but there was no way to open it from the outside—it was latched from within. She needed something small to wedge in the space. Sansa shimmied back out. Ghost was watching her pensively as she frantically pushed the leaves around, searching for a bit of rock, or something else she could use to pry open the window.

She looked up at Ghost and then an idea occurred to her. She felt around his neck for his collar, and Ghost dutifully held still.

"Sorry, I'll give this back when I'm done," she told him as she undid the collar. The gleaming tag, bearing his name and a mobile number, might be the perfect size...

Under the truck again, she wedged the tag between the frame and the window, and almost began to cry with relief when it fit into the space. Slowly, she wiggled it further in, trying to hit the latch.

Suddenly the truck gave an enormous groan, like a roaring, wounded animal, and it shifted with a horrific shriek of crunching metal. Blind panic overtook her for one moment and Sansa froze, eyes scrunched shut, hands over her ears, unable to even think clearly enough to hope—and then the truck stopped moving once more.

It had sunk further, and was still reverberating with the movement. She didn't know how long she had before the hinges of the passenger door simply ripped off.

Hands slippery with sweat and rain, she painstakingly wiggled the tag, watching the latch move millimeter by millimeter.

At last, with a click, it came undone, and she wedged the window open.

It was barely enough room for her to get through—she had to shrug out of her coat to make it possible. It could have taken minutes or hours to writhe into the truck; she had no concept of time, only of her objective.

Shaking and drenched, she was finally inside the truck, crawling along its ceiling. She crept forward and turned off the ignition, and the lights went out. Her own flashlight was flickering; otherwise they were now in total darkness.

Jon let out a groan of pain. He was still upside-down, and the inky pool of blood beneath him was getting bigger. Her fingers went numb. She couldn't even begin to think of how she'd get him out of the damn truck, now that they were both inside it. Why hadn't she thought of that before? Why was she so stupid?

She wiggled beneath him, the fabric underneath her slick with his blood and staining her pajamas, and tried to cradle him as best she could before undoing the buckle.

He dropped downward and into her lap, his chest hitting the horn with a blaring cry that jolted every cell in her body. He was mumbling, beginning to move, and she only just realized that she had been speaking: "don't move, stay calm, I've got you, it's going to be alright…"

Gingerly, with Jon still upside-down against her, she felt behind her for the door latch. It was like trying to creep around a sleeping dragon: one wrong move and the truck would roll and potentially kill them both. With her current angle, if the door was jammed from the inside as well, there wasn't much she could do. She tried the latch and the damn thing wouldn't budge, and she felt herself begin to cry again, though she hardly had noticed or intended it.

She tried to rock against the door gently, hoping to strike with the perfect amount of force, but it was truly jammed. And now, with Jon freed from the seatbelt, she was trapped in the truck as well, and more or less immobilized.

Her heart was in her throat. There had to be something, had to be some way out of this. But now that she'd turned off the lights, no one driving by could even see them.

His mobile! He might have had his mobile on him! She could call for help! With numb fingers she felt in his pockets, but there was only a wallet and a set of keys.

There was no one else. No help would come.

Sansa fingered the key back into the ignition, though it took a few tries because her hands were shaking so badly. She had no idea of whether this would work, and turning the engine on could be dangerous... She heard the engine roar back to life, and she waited for some new catastrophe, but the truck merely hummed.

She felt above her for the window switches, and with a shriek the driver-side window began to move, then stopped with a horrible crackle. It was only instinct that told her to hunch over Jon's face and protect them both as the glass of the window exploded, cutting into her back like fire.

But it was a way out.

She couldn't tell if she was still crying or if she was merely gasping with effort and pain as she rolled backward, shards of glass digging into her. She fell backwards out of the truck window, clutching Jon's limp form, and then she was frantically kicking them backwards, sliding through glass and mud, the truck's headlights blinding her. Jon was groaning in pain.

The momentum rocked the truck, and just as Ghost leapt forth and grabbed Jon's boot in his jaw to pull him fully out of the truck, the truck rocked with a spectacular groan, and rolled over once more. The crash resounded through the woods: the trees seemed to shake with it.

And then they were lying there, in the mud and rain, covered in blood, leaves, and bits of glass, staring helplessly at the ruined truck. It had rolled over completely this time, so that it was upside-down again, and the roof was completely crushed.

They would have been killed instantly.

Sansa did not think she had any more strength left, but this was only the beginning: now, she had to get Jon to a hospital.

"Wake up," she ordered, rolling him onto his back. A deep gash had smeared blood on his face and she felt wet warmth in his side that she was afraid to look at. She shook him desperately, and watched him float in and out of consciousness, his face contorted in pain.

She didn't even know if she had enough time to drag him, but she couldn't leave him here. Sansa hoisted Jon against herself, and began to move.

The haul up to the road was long, and painful. The movement seemed to shake him into consciousness again, and she heard him groan into her shoulder, her skin trembling with his voice.

"What…"

"Your truck flipped, you bloody _idiot_!" she gasped as she continued to shoulder him onward.

The road was up ahead, a blessing and a curse: they'd be closer to help, but once they got to the road, dragging him would no longer be possible. Her knees were already on the verge of buckling; she could never carry him.

"My house..."

"Yes, we're going to your house, wherever the _hell_ it is," she seethed, refusing to give in to her exhaustion. She felt a curious rage toward him. "What sort of _idiot_ drives a pickup truck in this weather? Aren't you supposed to be good at this? Even I would have known better!"

Near the road, she had to leave him. She turned to Ghost after she had placed Jon under a tree.

"I'll be right back. Stay with him," she ordered the dog, not realizing until later, when she was sprinting down the road, that it was perfectly ridiculous to expect Ghost to understand her.

And then she was freely running down the road, faster than she had ever run before in her life. She was taller than most girls, and she'd always loved her long legs for their beauty and for how others admired them, but now she loved her long legs for how fast she could run with them.

She found a cabin—it had to be Jon's—and the door was locked but it was easy enough to take a rock and bash in one of the windows. And then she was calling 999, babbling insanely to the responder, nearly shrieking at the woman with more authority and force than she had thought she even possessed.

She ran back to Jon and Ghost. She'd found more flashlights that she could use to attract attention on the road. Her long legs, the legs that got her catcalls and made her taller than Joffrey and Ramsay if she wore heels, the legs that she had dutifully waxed regularly since age fifteen, carried her just as swiftly back to them.

The rain had let up and Jon was more conscious now, curled on his side in pain, and Ghost was snuggled up against him, his snout resting on Jon's side protectively.

"They're coming, they're coming," she cried at Jon, and she began waving the flashlights desperately from the road, listening for the slightest hint of sirens, or tyres on gravel.

When the ambulance finally came, Sansa and Ghost watched as Jon's body was strapped to a stretcher. Blood stained the white cloth of the stretcher.

Jon might die.

"The dog can't come," one of the medics told her, and Sansa just looked at him with arched brows as Ghost gracefully leapt into the passenger side of the ambulance.

"I dare you to try and get him out," she said in a shaking voice, before climbing into the back of the ambulance.

* * *

Jon had forgotten how pain could blur and confuse things. He had fractured notions, like looking through a kaleidoscope, of being dragged through the rain, of flashing lights, and of bright copper hair.

He had learned this in the army: how entire sequences of events could be splintered and foggy, and yet particular, meaningless details could stay with you for years. He could recall the exact shade of muddied robin's egg blue that the hospital walls had been painted, where he had stayed after his first injury during his career in Afghanistan, but articulating exactly how he had got to the hospital, though he had been conscious for the entirety of it, was impossible, like he had only been told what had happened and was merely imagining pieces of it.

Now he was in hospital again, and his skin itched. A bandage—over stitches, which he hazily recalled receiving—was covering a large swath of his ribcage, and he'd had to receive a blood transfusion, too. The painkillers had left him cotton-mouthed and slow-witted. He had protested their use and had been ignored.

That deer had come out of nowhere. He was used to driving at night, knew that road better than he knew the palm of his hand, but his mind had been elsewhere. He'd been squinting at the woods, trying to recall where on the hill the girl had set up camp. He could recall the very instant where he had started to swerve, almost simultaneous with seeing the deer, and how clearly he had known in that moment that he was fucked.

He had some recollection of Ghost hovering over him, but he couldn't be sure that that was real, either. What if Ghost had— _oh, god_. He could not bear to finish that thought.

Ghost was all he had left.

Unable to bear that thought but unequal to the task of turning from it, Jon tried to sit up, desperately seeking a means of distraction. Outside of his room, the girl was sitting near the nurses' station, pallid under the fluorescent lighting, asleep sitting up. Even in the hospital lighting, her hair was bright and rich and made him remember happier times, the taste of such memories bittersweet.

Ghost was curled at her feet. He opened his eyes when Jon gave a low, soft whistle, and he met Jon's gaze, calm as usual. It seemed nothing could shake that dog. Jon fell back into the pillows, more weakened by his relief than he was by anything else. He had no idea how Ghost was even allowed to be inside the hospital, but it didn't matter.

The girl had saved him, then.

His truck had rolled over—that much he knew. But how had she got him out? Had he been flung? And how had Ghost managed to get out without a scrape?

 _Smart dog,_ he thought fondly. _Smart girl, too._ He sank into sleep.

* * *

Sansa had slept poorly, and her mouth felt mossy, and her breath was likely foul. She had actually gasped when she'd gone into the bathroom and had been confronted with her reflection.

She looked like something out of _The Walking Dead_. Her pajamas were ripped, her hair was stiff and caked with blood and mud and plastered to her head, and the puffiness and darkness under her eyes was profound. She wondered if all of her things were totally ruined by now. She didn't even know how she'd find her tent again.

"You can go in, if you want," one of the nurses said, coming out of Jon's room. "He's awake and doing rather well."

She probably thought they were a couple. The nurse eyed Ghost nervously and gave them a rather wide berth, leaving the hall silent and empty. Sansa didn't want to see Jon in her current state, but it wasn't like she'd be seeing him ever again, and it wasn't like there was anything between them. It was pointless to be so self-conscious.

Ghost followed her into Jon's room. Jon's hair had come out of its man-bun and was wild and tangled, and he was covered in bruises and cuts. Ghost leapt up onto the bed and curled up at Jon's feet.

Dark eyes searched her face.

"He had a bit of a limp before, but it seems better now," Sansa suddenly began rambling. "He is a brilliant dog, you know. He helped me the whole time and stayed with you when I went to go call 999-"

"Sansa," he interrupted, a little wryly, "what exactly happened?"

She had been recounting the events in her mind for hours now, because none of it seemed real. It was like she had fallen asleep at some point, and was now trying to find the seam between reality and dream.

"There was this awful crunching sound that woke me up, and I saw lights, so I went to investigate," she began. "Your truck had rolled over and you were—you were upside-down inside the truck," she continued haltingly. "It wasn't balanced properly, and the door was jammed, so I had to break into the rear window-"

"—Wasn't it upside down?" Jon wanted to know, peering at her in confusion.

"—Yeah, but there was just enough space for me to crawl through, and I thought there might be a sliding window. I had to use Ghost's collar—sorry, I dropped it somewhere and lost it—to break in and then get you out."

She couldn't stop fidgeting and tugging on her hair. Jon stared mutely at Ghost. "I got you out, eventually. It was pretty stupid, because I'd turned off the engine—I was worried about it overheating, or something—and then I had to turn it back on, because the only way out was through the window. We got out just in time. The truck rolled over again just as I pulled you out."

Jon didn't speak, and Sansa didn't speak further.

She looked like she'd been through war, and he could see her hands trembling finely. It must have taken ages to get him out of the truck. Nausea roiled in his gut.

He owed her a debt. She had saved him.

* * *

When Jon was finally released, they walked out together, awkwardness strung like a clothesline between them.

"You can come back with me," he said as they turned to face each other in the late morning sunlight, out front of the hospital. "You can borrow a change of clothes, and I'll help you find your tent and all. I've got another car...though if you don't want to ride with me, I would understand," he added wryly.

She was torn. She had a strange need to just be alone, but just as when she had been dragging him through the woods, she still felt she could not quite let him go.

For some reason, it still didn't feel like she'd actually gotten him to safety.

They were the same height, she realized, as their eyes met now. He quickly averted his gaze, as though ashamed.

She recognized that feeling. He probably felt like he owed her, like he was beholden to her now, in a way he had never agreed to. That, she knew, was an awful feeling. It took away your agency, it made you feel small. The kindest thing she could do was to allow him to feel he had repaid the debt, though of course, in her mind, there wasn't any debt at all.

"That would be brilliant," she finally said.

The cab ride back to Winterfell was quiet. Jon felt sick from the painkillers and Sansa only felt equal to staring out the window, watching the little village dissolve into countryside, then into wilderness.

The eagerness she felt to get back to that grove was unfamiliar: most of the time, when she found herself outside of London, her unhappiness was directly proportional to how far from a Whistles and a Caffe Nero she was. But as they descended into the woods, she felt increasingly at peace. Everything was still wet from the rain, but the sun edged the trees in gold and silver, like they had been gilded in magic.

She thought again of Jon walking towards her on the water yesterday, shining like he had been kissed by magic. It seemed like there were years between that moment and now.

Ghost rested on the seat between them, his head on Sansa's lap, and she absently ran her fingers through the fur on top of his head, remembering her own dog, Lady, who had been so like Ghost. Joffrey had killed Lady—or rather, it was his fault she had died. It had been the first nail in the coffin of her relationship with him.

Their families had been gathered during winter break the first year of university—back when her parents and Robb were still alive, back when her father and Joff's father Robert had still been best friends—and she had accidentally embarrassed him in front of everyone. Everyone had been playing charades, and Sansa, usually so in awe of Joffrey, had laughed at him when he'd guessed incorrectly.

As vengeance for such humiliation, Joffrey had let Lady out when no one had been looking, and Lady, still barely more than a puppy, had probably gleefully snatched the opportunity to wander freely. It had been Christmas Eve and the roads hadn't been busy, and they were living in picturesque Harrogate, where everyone would be cosy in their sprawling manors. No one should have been out on the roads at all. The chances of Lady being hit by a car had been quite low. It might not have ever happened.

That night, tipsy on eggnog and unaware of how much damage her innocent laughter had caused, Sansa had gone to curl up in her bed and only then realized that Lady was gone.

She, her father, Robb, and Arya had been out all night in the wet snow with flashlights, and in the wee hours of the morning, Robb had found Lady. Sansa had run through the snow, spotting her brother's broad form crouching over something on the side of the road. He wouldn't let her see Lady, but Sansa, through wet eyes, had seen the unmoving dark lump of fur on the side of the road before Arya had dragged her away.

Joffrey hadn't helped to look. When she had returned, weak with tears, he had taken her aside in the hall, gripping her shoulder painfully.

"Never laugh at me again." His eyes had been wild and his voice had trembled, on the verge of hysteria. She had been afraid, but not afraid enough. The whole thing had been surreal. _Who would hurt an animal?_ She had wondered. It had seemed impossible, and she had told herself for years that the two events were not related.

Sansa thought she might be sick as she recalled that moment, and she scratched behind Ghost's ear more vigorously, savoring the feel of his warm fur beneath her fingers, fixating on the feeling of the dog's warm breath through her pajama pants. She was more aware than ever of Jon beside her. Why was it that how a man treated animals was so indicative of how he treated women? Jon seemed to regard Ghost as his equal, rather than his pet—he loved him without condition and without insecurity.

Jon watched Sansa, trying to take his mind off the nausea. He hated painkillers, and was still mad that he'd been given them. They dulled the edges of everything, and made him feel slow and stupid. Sansa was mechanically patting Ghost, her mind far away, her eyes a bit wet. He watched her swallow rapidly. He wondered what she was remembering—it was clearly something bad.

 _I'm not helpless,_ she had told him. _I know you're not;_ he wanted to tell her now. He had flashes, glimpses, of her pulling his body from the truck. _You're not helpless at all._

They reached the cabin, and they wordlessly watched the black cab drive off, before finally acknowledging that it was up to them now.

There could be no further delays from the matter at hand: that there was now intimacy where none had been wanted. She must enter his life, whether he wished it or not. She had earned a place there, after all, in being the one to preserve it.

"Come inside. You can use my shower, and I'll lend you some clothes. Then I'll take you back. It's the least I can do, given you did save my life." Jon paused, his silence weighted. "Plus, I don't think Ghost's quite ready to say goodbye."

Sansa laughed, avoiding Jon's eyes, and followed him into the cabin. She'd been here last night, of course, and had been too frantic to take in any details, though now she looked about the place with wide eyes.

There were muddy footprints on the hardwood floor leading to the phone, but the place was otherwise spotless.

"Bathroom's that way. Let me grab you some clothes," Jon was saying, shaking Sansa from her observations. He disappeared into another room.

Jon still had Ygritte's old clothes, though they would be much too short for Sansa. That, and he _at least_ knew better than to give her his dead wife's clothing. She was his height, so he grabbed his slimmest-fitting flannel shirt and a pair of jeans and socks.

When he went back to the sitting room, she was crouched down, frantically wiping the mud off the floor. There was an awkward commotion as he tried to tell her she didn't have to do that, and she tried to apologize, and then he had shoved the clothes into her arms and directed her to his shower. When she had rounded the corner and disappeared behind the bathroom door, Jon was left with only the urge to cringe. _See,_ he wanted to tell Ygritte, _this is why I don't bring people over._

 _You know nothing, Jon Snow,_ she'd said to him so often, about so many things. It had been a running joke between them. He could hear her saying it now, as he thought of Sansa in the cab, running her hands through Ghost's fur like it was the one thing connecting her to reality, as her pretty eyes grew wet, as she struggled to keep hold of the present moment. _I know some things,_ he'd always say in retort, and he thought it now, staring at the closed bathroom door, hearing the soft rush of cloth upon skin. She was naked behind that door. _I know some things._

* * *

Jon's bathroom was spotless—only the bare necessities were in the shower. On the back of the toilet was a little shelf, however, that was packed to bursting with old prescription bottles, and she couldn't help it—she sneaked a look.

They were all expired by about two years, and none of them were in Jon's name—rather, for Ygritte Snow. The medication names were complicated, and the directions printed on each label were ominous.

She wondered when Ygritte Snow had died.

It certainly explained a lot.

Sadness was such a heavy thing. Weighed down by it, Sansa slowly turned on the shower, and stripped off her pajamas and boots. Her back was cut up and raw from when the window had exploded, and her body was bruised worse than anything Ramsay had ever done to her. Flashes of the night came back to her: the headlights through the rain, the horrific creaking and groaning of the truck, Jon falling helplessly into her lap...

She stepped under the hot water and her back was on fire as all of the cuts reopened, and she trembled under the hot water, watching the blood and dirt circle the drain, and feeling the searing agony of her cuts being washed out.

This person, wandering in the woods, with mussed hair and ruined pajamas; this person who had pulled Jon from the truck, dragged him to safety, run to call for help—was this Sansa Stark?

She should not have recognized herself. Yet when she stepped from the shower and looked at herself in the mirror, she realized that, for the first time in years, she was finally seeing herself.

* * *

They came to that clearing once more, and to her shock, her things were precisely as she had left them: the tent was still standing, the little pile of rocks and ash sat before it where she had built her first (and, truthfully, likely her last) fire. As she stepped into the grove, she felt that sense of returning home once more.

Jon and Ghost hung back for a moment. It was like they knew.

"Well done," Jon observed, gesturing at the tent. "Not that you used it much."

"Well, I suppose I'd better pack up my things," Sansa said quickly, as Ghost circled around her legs. She absently scratched his head. Jon wasn't looking at her, or even in her direction.

She felt like thanking him, but she didn't know how to say what, precisely, she was thanking him for.

"I'm not good with words," Jon suddenly began, finally looking at her. "But you saved my life. So, you know, thank you, Sansa."

"Oh, it's...well, of course," she stammered, her face growing warm. And then she asked The Question. "Why were you driving, anyway?"

Jon gave a half-smile.

"Ghost was worried about you, with all this rain," he said lightly.

"Well, then it's my fault," she responded with a laugh, but her voice was thick with emotion. _Thank you too,_ she wanted to say. Why? What did she need to thank him for?

"Seems like it's Ghost's fault, actually," he said, still grinning, and she found her smile matching his, mirroring him helplessly. "Well, I'll leave you to it."

"Be careful walking back. It was...nice meeting you," Sansa said now. "Jon."

Jon looked back at her.

"You too, Sansa."

He walked away, and Ghost trotted to her for one last pat on the head before slinking off after Jon. As Jon walked away, the morning sun edging him in gold once more, Sansa's heart swelled, and she realized what she had wanted to thank him for.

She had been such a silly girl all her life, and from her earliest days she had loved fairytales—stories of maidens and knights, and prince charmings and princesses and dragons. How many hours of her childhood had she spent daydreaming about knights in shining armor?

It was a piece of her that had been taken away by Joffrey's cruelty and humiliation; by the sudden, tragic death of her parents and Robb; by her own failings; by Ramsay and everything he had done to her, everything that she had allowed him to do to her.

That innocent but certain belief that there was beauty and magic in the world had been ripped from her, and yet, as she stood in this grove that felt like home, thinking of Jon foolishly, bravely venturing out in the rain to help her—all the while expecting nothing in return—she felt, for the first time in over a decade, like believing.

 _Thank you, Jon, for making me see beauty and magic again,_ she thought, and it was almost like praying, except that she already had gotten what she had wished for.

* * *

Jon and Ghost returned to the cabin. He felt strangely out of breath, and now that the sluggishness of the painkillers had worn off, he was unsettled and could not seem to stay still for very long. Sansa had infused the cabin with the strange magic that only a woman could, and Jon found himself peering about his cabin as though he didn't live there; cautious, expecting her to jump out at him at any moment.

He was giddy, he was foolish and pointlessly happy. The cabin seemed brighter, and unfamiliar to him. He saw things in it as though it was the first time. He had forgotten that Ygritte had painted one of the walls of the sitting room bright red, and it confronted him like a blaring horn when he passed by it.

In the bathroom, however, he saw it: a long, bright red hair, clinging to the damp tiled wall from when Sansa had showered.

Abruptly, Jon slumped to the cold tiled floor, like the wind had been knocked from him. The mirror was still fogged from her shower; the showerhead was still dripping rhythmically. He stared at that long copper-coloured hair for a very long time.

Ghost came in and sat next to him.

Jon felt like they were two parents, waiting for a delinquent child to come back home in the night.

His eyes burned and he was breathless. Head between his knees, he gasped and tried not to cry. He never cried.

This cabin was full of signs of Ygritte, so why did a single long, red hair break him like this?

When he looked up, his eyes blurred with emotion, that single long, red hair was just another pretty illusion. He sat there, for a moment, and almost let himself pretend that Ygritte had just got out of the shower, that Ygritte was just in the other room.

But he couldn't forget that night she'd ordered him to shave all of her pretty copper hair from her head, after finding too many clumps of it in the shower drain. There were too many obstacles of pain between the last time long red hair had stuck to his shower walls and now. He wouldn't let himself fall prey to pretty illusions.

Jon reached forward and pulled the long, red hair from the tiled wall. Red-headed women had a knack for saving him, but right now, he really needed to save himself.

He washed the red hair down the sink drain, and decided to forget about Sansa.


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three**

* * *

' _You heard my voice, I came out of the woods by choice,_

 _Shelter also gave their shade,_

 _But in the dark I have no name.'_

* * *

The drive back to London was quiet. Normally, Sansa would do anything to avoid silence, which she had learned to fear. Silence meant thinking, and thinking meant doubt, darkness, and reliving memories. But this time, the silence was welcome. She wanted to think.

She drove back south, watching the countryside morph into civilization like she was watching her own rebirth.

She still had Jon's shirt. He had told her to borrow it, but he'd not asked for it back. It smelled good; she supposed that was the scent of his skin.

Returning Jon's shirt would be a good excuse to talk to him again, but she wasn't sure she would use it. To use it as an excuse to attach herself to him would be a step backward. Sansa wanted to leave Sansa Bolton, helpless and broken, behind. Sansa Stark had built her own tent, had survived in the woods, had saved Jon's life. Sansa Bolton had needed Jon; Sansa Stark did not.

Dammit. Perhaps Arya had been right about this whole self-reliance business.

She hated it when Arya was right.

She got back to London and put off returning Uncle Petyr's headlamp. She didn't want to see him. She had realized that every time she saw Petyr, he mentioned Ramsay or Joffrey or her parents' death. He tried to tear her down.

She didn't have to be nice to him just because he thought she was pretty.

She continued to see her therapist. She went back to working out—this time, at Arya's gym, and consequently had her arse kicked by her little sister five nights a week in martial arts. She cut her hair to her shoulders, the shortest it had ever been, and regretted both the haircut and the resultant insecurity for months.

"You're allowed to like your hair long and still be a strong, independent woman, you know," Margaery had told her over cheap margaritas, as Sansa tearfully attempted to come to terms with her impulsive haircut.

She got a new job, handling the marketing for Arya and Gendry's gym, and she was good at it. _Really_ good at it.

Jon's flannel shirt and jeans sat in her closet, folded neatly. At first she had to fight the urge to sleep in the flannel shirt, but the urge faded. Things got piled on top of the clothes, and she forgot that she had had to fight the urge to begin with.

She didn't forget Jon, though. With each night that she went out in glittering London, with each man more polished and well-bred than the one before who bought her drinks and charmed them, he stayed with her, almost like he was walking alongside her just as Ghost had done.

She could not help but compare these men to the man who had walked toward her on water, edged in gold, his hand outstretched to hers for no reason other than to help her.

* * *

A year later, as the summer turned to autumn, the anniversary of her divorce arrived, and Sansa returned to Winterfell.

She wasn't returning for Jon, though she had brought his shirt and trousers, freshly washed and tidily folded, with a string and a note.

Her plan was to find that grove. That was really why she was coming back to Winterfell. She wanted to sit in that sacred place for a few days. Though she'd not told anyone about the anniversary of her divorce, she planned on honoring it, in her own, private way.

So this time she'd brought her own camping supplies, and she'd done proper research on her own. Arya hadn't been able to see her off at the last minute, and Sansa hadn't minded.

The trek to that grove was shorter this time. Like invisible strings on her heart, Sansa was drawn by beauty and magic back to her grove.

As she crested that hill once more, her heart was thundering in her ribcage, not for want of cardiovascular strength—as Arya's increasingly difficult training had seen to that—but for fear that she might not feel that peace once more, that she might have simply imagined it this time a year prior.

But it happened again: she set foot in the grove, and she crossed into her own world. The day was cool; rain was likely tonight.

Sansa made quick work of setting up her campsite, and now the only thing to do before it got dark was to return Jon's clothes.

She had only told Arya the general outline of what had happened in the park that night. Arya, so clever, had immediately zeroed in on the presence of an attractive man, but her suspicions had faded quickly, for Sansa did not mention Jon after that. A few months ago, Arya had pried again, wondering if Sansa planned on seeing him again, and Sansa had simply shrugged.

She didn't plan on seeing Jon again. She could tell that her presence made him uncomfortable, and so her plan was to merely leave the clothes with the note at his door. It was still light out, so it was likely he was out ranging through the woods, and not at home.

She trekked down the long hill, past the ravine where the truck had flipped. There were no signs of it anymore; it was almost disappointing to see how that night of struggle and fear had been so cleanly erased. As she walked, her fears began to build. What if he _was_ home? Would he remember her? Would he be happy to see her, or would she just be a reminder of a largely hassling episode for him? Would she be a welcome guest, or an imposition?

The cabin came into view, and Sansa halted abruptly.

Jon was out front, washing his windows. He had clearly heard her, and so had Ghost. Both pairs of eyes were on her now.

It was too late to turn back now.

"Hi. I...came to return your clothes," she called a bit lamely, holding up the neatly folded clothing as she approached him on the drive.

Ghost padded up to her and nudged her leg with his head gently. She found herself grinning at the dog, and when she looked up, Jon was straightening up and brushing the dirt off his hands in an overly-attentive way, like he was trying to buy himself time.

His beard had grown in quite a bit; he looked a little more wild and unkempt than the last time she had seen him, though these details barely registered, because her heart still swelled with hope at the sight of him. His wry half-smile, his humbled way of holding himself, his shyness matched with his straightforward, helpful nature: maybe she was being a fool (she probably was) but she saw these things first.

"You're camping in that grove again?" he intuited easily, and Sansa decided to approach him. He had seen her at her lowest. There was no hiding from him at this point. She wouldn't take up too much of his time.

"Yes, and I promise that this time I actually did my research. I already knew how to build a proper fire, thanks to you, but now I know the other stuff, too," she said proudly.

" _And_ you've got proper gear," Jon noticed, nodding to her windbreaker and hat. "I...like the wolf bit," he added wryly. Sansa grinned and looked down at her shirt, which was partly visible since her windbreaker was hanging open.

The shirt had been designed as part of Arya's gym's image revamp, as marketing, and featured the logo that Sansa herself had designed: an abstraction of a wolf peering around the wall. She kept wolves in the marketing theme of the gym. The gym had been Arya's brainchild, and had been something Arya had wanted to do since they were teens. It was as much a part of Arya as her love for wolves was, and Sansa knew instinctively that the more Arya could be a part of the gym's public identity, the better. People, particularly women, flocked to Arya. She was strong, confident, and quick-witted, a combination that made people like her and trust her immediately.

The name for the gym had come to her when she had been tricked into trying Gendry's rock-climbing wall. Sweating, harnessed, groping the misshapen plastic with sweaty hands, she had found herself furiously grateful that the gym had more than rock climbing, and that was when she had had a brainwave that had nearly made her fall off the wall. The gym was newly christened "Beyond the Wall" to draw attention to its rock-climbing wall, and Arya and Gendry had, to her shock, taken to it immediately.

"It's the logo of my sister's gym," she explained. She wanted to tell him all about it, wanted the opportunity to perhaps prove herself to him, but she held her tongue. "Well, anyway, I decided to come back as a sort of new tradition, and I wanted to return these while I was here. You, er, let me borrow them last year. I'm not sure if you remember now," she explained, holding out the folded clothing.

"It's not every day you get flipped over in your truck, knocked unconscious, and saved by a girl who you taught to build a fire." His lips quirked in a hint of a smile, Jon took the clothes from her. Their fingers brushed, and the warmth that she felt every time she stepped into her grove filled her now as their eyes met, as she took in the scar from that night over his eye. Words from her past came to her, from out of nowhere: _someone brave, and gentle, and strong._ Where had those words come from? Who had said that?

"There's something about that grove," Sansa began, not sure why she needed to express this to Jon. Perhaps it was because she felt he alone would understand. "I had to come back. Today is a significant anniversary—it's a good one but also a sad one, in some ways—and I needed to be in that grove again. Last year, when I pitched the tent and slept in it, I slept better than I had in years. It was-" she couldn't finish.

But Jon nodded seriously, casting his gaze up the mountain.

"These woods are ancient; you can sense it," he agreed, "and I know what you mean about that grove. There's a hot spring running through that part of the mountain, so even in the winter, the ground is warm. It's not surprising that you feel some attachment to that place. It's a good campsite.

"Hopefully this time, you won't have to pull me out of any upended trucks," he added with a humbled smile.

"Hopefully this time, Ghost won't worry about me so much," she retorted. "Well, anyway, I just wanted to return your clothes," she blustered, keenly sensing how she was taking up his time.

Jon stood there, holding the clothes.

This was it. Again they were parting, and for certain this would be the last time she'd see him.

She wished she could say more, but perhaps there was no need. She was learning to walk away from things, learning to stop chasing men. She had her own strength now. She didn't need his. "It was good to see you again." This was not enough to convey who he was, what he meant, to her, but she didn't know how to tell him without scaring him off.

Jon bit his lip. She had a flash of an image of pressing her lips to his, but she quickly dismissed it.

"You too," he said at long last. "Be careful in the woods."

* * *

After Sansa had gone back up the hill, Jon left the clothes—so neatly folded and wrapped up—on his kitchen table.

To unwrap them and put them away would erase that it had happened, and he wasn't quite ready to do that. Just like that morning one year ago, her presence had lingered around the cabin, bringing out life and colour. He wanted to preserve that feeling as much as he could.

However, this had been a mistake. Later that day, his best friend Sam, Sam's girlfriend Gilly, and her son (also named Sam) dropped by for dinner. Sam was considered a genius—it was apparently official, based on his IQ score—but Gilly's intellect was often overlooked, which was a mistake. Gilly was highly perceptive and could intuit quite a lot more than she ever let on. With her 'trashy' accent, overly-processed hair, and former occupation as a prostitute, people tended to dismiss her, which was only to their detriment.

Both Sam and Gilly immediately noticed the clothes sitting on his kitchen table. It hadn't occurred to Jon to hide them. There was nothing to hide. So why did he feel like they had stumbled upon something private?

Their reactions were different. Sam turned on Jon with bright eyes. "Was there a _girl_ here?" he asked brightly, saying 'girl' like another might say, 'unicorn,' before wandering off to inspect the package. Gilly merely looked at him appraisingly.

Somehow, that was worse. Jon studiously avoided her gaze.

"Those are _my_ clothes, Sam," he pointed out, letting Gilly's son Sam pet Ghost, who was, at Jon's pointed look, tolerating the child's hands on him. "What about my folded clothes would make you think-"

"Did you trim your beard?" Gilly cut in, looking at Jon's mass of dark hair incredulously. Jon self-consciously ran a hand over his beard.

In fact, he _had_ brushed his hair and trimmed his beard after Sansa had dropped by. He wasn't one for vanity beyond hygiene, and, particularly as he could often go weeks without seeing a person these days, he sometimes forgot about the beard. But one look at his reflection had made him cringe. He was looking like more of a crazy mountain man than ever. Shamefully, he wished he could do over the morning's reunion with Sansa, without looking like a small bear had latched itself onto his face.

"It needed it," he said defensively, turning away from Gilly's perceptive gaze.

"Oh, this is from the girl who saved your life!" Sam was saying happily. Jon whirled around. Sam was opening the note that Sansa had attached, in her precise, elegant penmanship, thanking him for letting her use the clothing and apologizing for taking so long to return it. "Pretty writing. She must be a pretty girl," Sam deduced eagerly. "Don't you think so, Gilly?"

Gilly took the note and examined it, then looked at Jon.

"I'm going to start cooking," Jon said loudly.

As per their routine for these visits, Sam, Ghost, and Gilly's son retired to the sitting area, where Sam got a roaring fire going and Ghost tolerated being 'cuddled' by the child, while Jon and Gilly cooked. Gilly often brought far too much food, insisting that it had been an accident, leaving Jon with weeks' worth of leftovers. They stood together in the kitchen now, peeling potatoes wordlessly.

The trouble with Gilly was that she rarely pried, and as a result, Jon had found himself unwittingly opening up to her on more than one occasion. At the moment he felt like he had to defend himself to her, but he couldn't say particularly why. He had done nothing wrong.

"She's got very long red hair," he confessed suddenly. "And she's from London, and had never been camping before. But she came back."

"She came back a whole year later, just to return your clothes?" Gilly asked mildly, continuing seamlessly to peel the potato.

"She's camping here again. Something about it being a happy and sad anniversary or something. She figured she'd return the clothes as well."

They were silent for some time. At last, Gilly spoke.

"You know, if Sam hadn't saved me, I might not have ever let myself open up to him. We wouldn't be together now."

"But you and Sam already had learned so much about each other. You already knew each other, already had things in common," Jon argued immediately, setting the potato peeler on the counter to look at Gilly helplessly. "Sansa and I have nothing in common, and we don't know each other. And with her hair...what if I'm just looking for Ygritte to come back?"

"Sam is a technical genius and I'm a former prostitute," Gilly pointed out. "We've really got nothing in common at all."

"But you knew that something could work between you," he countered.

"No, I didn't. I just decided, why not give it a shot?"

Gilly said nothing more, and Jon resentfully resumed peeling potatoes.

"What about the red hair, though?" he pressed, not looking at Gilly. He heard her snicker.

"I think you just like redheads, Jon Snow."

* * *

 _I just decided, why not give it a shot?_

Jon held Gilly's words like a talisman as he trudged through the fallen leaves up the hill, to what he now thought of as Sansa's grove. _Why not give it a shot?_

He could think of a million reasons to not give it a shot.

Sansa might not want him.

They had nothing in common.

He still had a house full of his dead wife's stuff.

Just to name a few.

They had been through a traumatic ordeal together, which he knew from his time in the army could create intimacy that would probably prove embarrassingly flimsy when subjected to any sort of inspection.

Every time he saw his old army friends, they needed to drink, and they spent the whole time discussing the past, and if they attempted to edge away from that dynamic, it became all too clear that their bonds were limited. This made these bonds no less precious, but Jon knew better than to try and stretch a bond further than its natural limits.

But something about Sansa filled his lungs with hope every time he thought of her.

Ghost had taken to her immediately.

She had returned his clothes.

He kept thinking of her sneakily trying to mop up his floor that morning when they had returned to his cabin; he kept thinking of how in the hospital, shaking with adrenaline and fatigue, she had analytically, manically relayed to him how she had rescued him from the truck.

These things were little details, fragments of beautiful things. Could they add up to something worth fighting for?

He crested the hill, and now wished he'd brought some sort of prop, like mugs of tea. He had no excuse for being here.

And there she was. It felt like coming home after a very long day.

Sansa was sitting in front of her fire, and startled a bit when he came into the grove. Dusk was falling fast, and her hair gleamed like a beacon. He tried to stop the smile tugging at his lips, for he didn't want to give so much of himself away, but she was smiling too, so he let himself break into a full smile. Ghost padded ahead of him and dropped next to Sansa.

Sansa watched Jon come into the grove, edged in gold once more by the fire. Her heart was in her throat; she could not speak around her hopes.

"Ghost was looking for you," Jon explained as he approached her. There was an ever-swelling balloon inside of him as he tried to read her, to see if she would allow his presence.

"Here, sit. I just finished eating; I'd have offered you some but it's too late now," she said hastily, scooting over. "If you want to sit, I mean," she added. She was pulling at her hair self-consciously, biting her lip.

"Thanks," he said simply, and he dropped in front of the fire in a neutral place. Ghost was between them, and he was an arm's length from Ghost. Not so close as to force his presence on her, not so far as to draw attention to the unfamiliarity between them.

"This place is just like I remembered it last year," Sansa told him now in a rush, her face flushed with happiness. "Oh! You cut your beard," she noticed suddenly, and now it was his turn to blush.

"Some friends came by, and I realized just how bad it'd gotten," he said. It hadn't strictly happened in that order, but he didn't want to give away just how vain she had him. "Impressive fire," he said now, nodding to the flames.

"I had a good teacher."

He had never been very good at this. Gilly had implied that he'd need to open up, to give more of himself, but he didn't know how to do that. Ygritte had made it so easy: she had pulled things from him whether he wanted her to or not, getting to know him by sheer force. And Ygritte had told him things about herself; he had been unable to not get to know her. Sansa was private. She was as guarded and unknowable as the woods of Winterfell, and yet, there was warmth running through her, too.

"Why did you come here last year?" He decided to be direct. Perhaps he could take a page out of Ygritte's book.

She laughed, to his surprise.

"My sister made me," she confessed. "She thought I might find it... empowering, I think."

"And did you?"

"Aside from my little swim in the river, yes, actually."

He was listening. He wanted to know.

Out of the blue she remembered those words that she'd recalled earlier: _someone brave, and gentle, and strong._

She suddenly remembered where those words had come from. Her father had said those words, after she and Joffrey had begun to make loose references to an engagement.

"He's no prince, Sansa," her father, so brief and direct in his words—much like Jon, actually—had said, so sadly. "He isn't the sort of man I would choose for you. You should be with someone brave, and gentle, and strong."

Sansa watched Jon absently touch Ghost, ruffling his fur. Her mouth had gone dry.

Jon was listening to her; when was the last time a man had sincerely wanted to know her, wanted to understand her? When was the last time a man had asked her a question with no endgame, with no ulterior motive in mind?

"I was married, and two years ago to the day I ended that marriage. It ended badly," she confessed, measuring her words. "Actually, it didn't just end badly. The whole marriage was bad; _he_ was bad. He hurt me, and I let him hurt me, for too long."

Jon didn't say anything, so she continued. "Last year, I came here as a last-ditch attempt to rebuild myself, and I didn't really think it would work, but somehow, it did. That's why I had to come back. This place healed me, I think."

Jon stared at her. His eyes were so dark; his expression without design. She could not know what he was thinking, but at least he bore no signs of wanting to run from her.

"Where is the fucker now?" he finally asked, after swallowing. She had watched his adam's apple move, watched him try and collect himself. He didn't need to say anything; that reaction alone was enough.

He didn't think less of her. He wasn't disgusted by her, and he wasn't afraid of her confession.

"Ugh, I think he got remarried," she scoffed, looking away and blinking rapidly to hide how his sincerity had moved her. "Poor girl. I have a restraining order, though, so I only get bits and pieces through the grapevine."

Jon toyed with Ghost's fur, to hide how his hands shook.

 _An eye for an eye,_ he thought ruefully. She had given him a piece of her, and now it was his turn.

"I used to be married, too. I can't imagine how anyone could-" he halted abruptly, shaking his head in disgust.

"What happened?" Sansa asked carefully.

"Cancer." He knew he could go no further than this, not here, not now, and Sansa seemed to sense it.

"My sister has a gym," she changed the subject swiftly, masterfully, and his throat immediately felt less constricted.

He could have kissed her out of gratitude just for that gift, that she had not pushed him any further. "It used to be this little studio—just kickboxing. But she decided to team up with a friend of hers and expand it, and she brought me on to help. At first it was just marketing, that sort of thing. I helped set up some social media accounts for her. But it's become kind of a big deal," she continued, her voice growing warm.

He risked a glance at her. Why was it that he was both afraid to look at her yet desperate to do so? "Like, now I'm basically running it," she confessed in a thrilled rush, "and we've got this enormous space in Clapton now, and we're getting investors so we can expand it even further. We're having an opening party for the investors next month, too."

She told him all about the gym, about her sister and her sister's business partner, about the plans she had made, how she wanted to decorate it, how she had developed their social media strategy.

And then Jon found himself talking, too, more than he even did with Sam. He talked about the park, about how many people he had saved from the river. He talked about his friends, especially Sam. He talked about Ghost. He even told her about his deployment in Afghanistan.

They talked for hours. They talked until the fire died down to mere embers, and that balloon within him began to expand once more, as he sensed a penultimate moment approaching.

What was he meant to do now?

He felt like Gilly had meant he ought to make some sort of advance, but after all of that, to suddenly turn to her now, to try and touch her, seemed so audacious.

But he wanted to touch her. He wanted to touch her so badly.

"I should let you get some rest," Jon said now, rising to his feet, clenching and unclenching his fists. Sansa stood as well, though first she had to extricate herself from Ghost, who looked rather annoyed by this development.

"Thanks for coming by," she said shyly as they faced each other.

He noticed yet again that they were precisely the same height. He could kiss her, with only the slightest movement. "Um, listen, if you're in London when we have the opening party for the gym, you should swing by. Or swing by whenever you're in London, actually. We can—we can get lunch, or something. I don't know if you ever make it into London, but if you happen to-"

"Yeah, of course," he said immediately. This was a lie: he hadn't been to London in years. "When is the...the thing?"

"Next month. Here, if you give me your number, I can text you the details," she suggested, fishing in her pocket for a mobile. Jon thought of his landline. He'd never bothered to get a mobile. Why would he need it? He used a radio for his ranging duties and a landline for everything else.

"I...don't actually have a mobile," he confessed. Two lies in such a short span of time seemed excessive. He was too old to be lying to impress pretty girls. Sansa snorted.

"I'm not even surprised. I remember that night, I was trying to find a mobile in your truck—I was still stuck at that point—and I think at the time I just assumed you'd left it at home, or it had fallen out, or something," she laughed. "Okay, fine—give me your landline...or do you just have a radio frequency?" she teased. "Bat signal? Tin cans?"

He watched her input his landline into her mobile with neatly manicured fingers. The mobile was a sleek thing, clearly the latest model. The differences between them were brought to the fore once more: her glossy life in London, with manicures and mobiles and parties and traffic and investors, and his isolated life here, with nothing but trees and Ghost and his dead wife's things.

"Well, um, have a good night. And if you need anything, I'm just down the hill...as you already know," he joked. They were laughing again, and then, abruptly, they weren't, and the woods were suddenly buzzing around them.

"See you in London?" There was hope tingeing her voice. The urge to touch her was unbearable, it was senseless. He could not seem to draw a breath.

What if he did touch her? He could hug her.

People hugged. It wouldn't be _that_ weird.

He thought of the look on her face as she had told him about her ex-husband, and it stilled his hands.

He would not touch her.

"See you in London," he agreed softly.

Their eyes met and he bit his lip, and abruptly turned from her.

Sansa watched Jon disappear into the forest, Ghost trailing after him. When he was fully gone, she let out the breath she had been holding.

For a moment there, she had thought he might touch her.

She wrapped her arms around herself and went back into her tent. She could almost taste her disappointment, but the taste was sweeter than she might have thought.

 _Someone brave, and gentle, and strong._

She found herself smiling as she curled up in her sleeping bag.

Maybe she'd see him in London. Maybe he would touch her then.

* * *

By the time Jon got back to his cabin, the light on his phone indicating a voicemail was already lit up. He had forgotten the joy of anticipation; it rushed like fire through his blood now, lighting him up like a city.

He didn't even listen to the voicemail for days because he wanted to savor that joy, that anticipation of hearing Sansa's voice. He wanted to savor the proof of the connection between them—that it was indeed a connection, that it was not one-sided, that there was a reason to hope for something.

"I think I'll get a mobile," he told Sam days later. A gleam shone in Sam's eyes, and before Jon knew it, they had driven into town and Sam was explaining the finer points of each possible model as though he had been rehearsing this for weeks. He probably had, actually. However, after hours of education, to Sam's horror Jon had chosen the simplest model.

That was the first step. He decided that Sansa would be the recipient of his very first text message, but as he paced round his house, surrounded by Ygritte's things, trying to compose this text message, his mind continually drew a blank.

He needed to clean out Ygritte's things.

Not all of them. But the reminders of their last year together—that year of pain—were still everywhere: the wobbling towers of medications (that she had point-blank refused to take reliably) were still stacked in the bathroom. Her old hats and scarves, after she had lost her beautiful copper hair, still took up space in his closet.

He wished that someone would do it for him, and he even considered asking Sam, or his old army friends—Edd in particular would have been willing to help him—but he knew he had to do this alone.

And so on the day of the first frost, with the leaves turned as red as Ygritte's hair, Jon cleaned it all out.

He didn't clean out her medals from her own army career, or the photos of them together (there were few; it had rarely occurred to either of them to take photographs), or anything else sentimental like that. Those things he neatly boxed and put in his attic.

But in a box, he dumped out the medications, the hats and scarves, all of the damn paperwork that had come with her illness; the books he had bought on her illness that she had refused to read...all those little reminders of the bitter, agonizing end.

And on that sunny day, he went to the banks of the river—not far from where Sansa had fallen in—and he built a fire, and he burned it all.

The fire was enormous. Had he been a camper, and not a park ranger, he would have received a hefty fine. The smoke rose up, the flames just like Ygritte's hair.

"I want to be burned," she'd told him at the end, in hospital. "I want to be the biggest fire there ever was."

He had been unable to do much more than swallow his pain and nod, gripping her hand in his desperately, hating that he couldn't make himself laugh for her. She'd been trying to be funny, trying to keep up her old fire, and he had been both honored beyond words and furious that she was doing such a thing for him.

He watched the fire all day, Ghost by his side, and it wasn't until it had finally died out and darkness had fallen that he realized his face was wet. He hadn't even known he was crying. He never cried.

A week after that, with the day of Sansa's party looming, he still had yet to text someone (though he had received _many_ texts from Sam, most of them irrelevant, moving pictures. He had been told these were called GIFs).

And so, with Sam's help, he sent his first text message to Sansa.

 _This is Jon, from the park. I'm planning on coming to London on the 27th. Maybe we can get lunch?_

"Add an x!" Gilly insisted.

"No one's adding any x," Jon said loudly, holding the mobile close to his chest. Sam's eyes lit up.

"Ooh, but everyone does that," he said eagerly.

"No, they don't!"

"How would you know? You've never texted before!" Sam countered, prepared to argue, but Gilly snatched the mobile out of Jon's hands.

"Sent!" she said impishly.

Almost immediately, his mobile buzzed and chirped. "She replied!" Sam gasped.

 _Hello, Jon from the park :) That works perfectly. We can get lunch and you can come to the party. Can't wait! x_

"She wrote an x back, Jon!"

"Only because you two did first," Jon groaned. "Give me that. No one's touching my mobile anymore."

"What's the name of the gym? Let's see if we can find it," Sam was already saying, opening the laptop he carried with him everywhere (among multiple other electronic devices).

"It's called 'Beyond the Wall,'" Jon let out reluctantly, knowing this was against his better judgment. "I think it's in Clapton."

Sam's chubby fingers should have been slow, but they flew over his keyboard in a blur.

"Her name is Sansa Stark—that's a well-known name, Jon!" Sam realized, turning the display to show him. Images from a recent article on the gym popped up on the screen. Sansa was beaming in one shot, and his heart gave a funny shudder at the sight of her.

Jon wanted to study the picture more, wanted to drink in Sansa eagerly, but Sam had already turned the display away again, his fingers flying over the keys in a blur. "I knew it—she's from the Stark family. Look, there was a big article on her wedding a few years ago," Sam added. "Her dad was Ned Stark, business partner with Robert Baratheon. He died in an accident several years ago; I still remember reading about it. God, it seems a bit sick that they talked about the accident in this article on the wedding, doesn't it? Feels almost like they were trying to get maximum page views."

Jon felt sick as another image came up—it was a shot from the wedding attached to an announcement. Sansa, pale and too slim in a simple white gown, was smiling wanly at the camera. A man with dark hair and bright, impish blue eyes had a strong arm around her shoulders. He was handsome; he looked likable and popular and polished. They looked good together, and it should have been a lovely picture, but Jon hated it. Sansa looked miserable, _diminished_.

"Ramsay Bolton," Gilly blurted out. "I know him," she said suddenly.

Jon and Sam looked back at Gilly with surprise. Her face had gone pale.

"Know him?" Jon prompted.

But Gilly was staring at the picture of Sansa and Ramsay. Jon hadn't seen that look on her face in quite a long time.

 _Ramsay Bolton._

Gilly didn't say anything else, and Jon did not miss how Sam's eyes had lingered on his girlfriend with a look that Jon had never seen before. _Every relationship's got its own darkness, its own pain,_ he had thought, remembering again clutching Ygritte's hand in hospital at the end—it had become so frail, her grip so weak. Sam never discussed Gilly's troubled past—it was perhaps the one topic that Sam stayed quiet on—but Jon had known the couple for long enough to know that it still haunted them.

No love was without pain.

It wasn't all romantic fireside chats and pretty notes and sweet text messages.

In fact, most of it was pain and struggle. Love was not easy, and it fixed no problems—mostly, it created them.

So why was he bothering to chase love again?

That night, Jon borrowed Sam's laptop, and browsed the internet for the first time. Late into the night, he had a dozen tabs open, all about Ramsay. He had devoured everything on the man: his history, his current business dealings…his current address.

His eyes burning with exhaustion, Jon began clicking all of the tabs closed, until finally, only that picture of Ramsay and Sansa on their wedding day remained. Nauseated by it, Jon opened a new tab once more. He found the image of Sansa from the interview on the gym again, and compared that to her wedding picture.

She looked lit up and alive as London itself in the image from the interview. She was radiant as the sun.

Love was pain enough on its own. We hurt the people we loved no matter what we did, no matter how hard we tried to spare them. Like bulls in china shops we trampled and crushed their feelings. Love was pain enough without even trying. Every relationship had its darkness; this was unavoidable, Jon knew.

 _I know some things._

He knew that to cause pain was inevitable; words were weapons that we could fling at the ones we loved when we were hurting.

He knew that every relationship had its darkness.

He knew to be afraid of love and afraid of hope.

But he wasn't afraid of Ramsay Bolton. He thought of the years he had spent learning how to cause other men pain. He could do it with fists, with knives, with guns—he knew quite a lot about how to hurt a man.

 _I know some things, Ramsay Bolton,_ he thought, looking at those bright blue eyes, before he closed the laptop.


	4. Chapter 4

**Part Four**

* * *

 _'But do not ask the price I pay,  
_

 _I must live with my quiet rage._

 _Tame the ghosts in my head,_

 _That run wild and wish me dead.'_

* * *

"What's his name?" Arya pressed. She and Gendry were helping Sansa organize the mountains of paperwork in her office. The day of the party—and of Jon's visit—was looming, but Sansa had no time to be anxious about it. There was far too much to be done in preparation for the gym's party. Everything had to be perfect—she had to impress their investors.

"It's Jon Snow," Sansa said distractedly, her stomach lurching—for a moment, she thought she had forgotten to actually reserve the beer garden for the party. "Oh, thank god," she sighed, sinking back into her desk chair, clutching the paperwork. "Found the receipt. I _knew_ I had done it weeks ago."

"Jon Snow? As in, _the_ Jon Snow? British Army hero?" Gendry said suddenly. Sansa glanced at him, still a bit weak with relief about the receipt.

"Um, maybe? He was in the army, like ten years ago," she said. "You know him?"

"I know _of_ him," Gendry corrected, half-laughing with incredulity. "Google him. You'll see."

"Gendry, this really isn't the moment—" Sansa began, but Arya had stolen her keyboard and was typing.

"This him?" she asked, as Gendry came around the desk to kneel next to Sansa.

"Yeah, that's him. Total badass, absolute legend," Gendry confirmed.

Sansa felt weak for different reasons now. A portrait of a much younger Jon, in full military regalia, was taking up half her screen. His hair was shorter, and he was clean-shaven, but it was undoubtedly him. "I thought he married another vet, though," Gendry added now. Arya was already googling.

"Ygritte Snow," Sansa said faintly, recalling the dozens of bottles of pills stacked in a tower on the back of the toilet in his bathroom. Arya brought up an obituary for Lieutenant Ygritte Snow. "She died a few years ago, of cancer," she continued, remembering how Jon's face had seemed to close off when he'd told her about his wife.

Ygritte's obituary was long, and mostly detailed her years of military service. _Loving wife of Major Jon Snow,_ the obituary read. She was unconventionally attractive, with a slightly snub nose and heavy freckling, and a likable grin and clever dark eyes. _And red hair,_ Sansa thought.

"So the legendary Major Jon Snow's a _park ranger_ now?" Gendry asked, straightening up and pulling Sansa from her thoughts. "What a waste. He's a hero."

"Excuse me, butthead, you work at a _gym_. How is that less of a waste?" Arya pointed out, and Gendry snorted.

"I'm no Jon Snow," he said, shaking his head. "So he's really coming here?"

"For lunch. And maybe to the party," Sansa replied, her gaze fixed on the portrait of Ygritte accompanying her obituary.

For the first time, Sansa felt a clench of fear.

Had they miscalculated, in choosing to see each other once more?

Jon Snow was a war hero; he had lived an impressive life, an _important_ life. And she...had mostly shopped. It was only in the last year that she felt she had done anything of value in her life. But, how could her marketing campaign—which, in light of Jon's war record, seemed sillier than ever—ever match up to what Jon had done with his life? How would he ever take her seriously, how would they ever fit their lives together? Here was a man who had watched his best friends be killed by machine gun fire, who had ridden in tanks, who knew what bombs sounded and smelled like.

She began to second-guess her decision to meet up with him. Many times over the next few days, she would look at the record of his text message on her mobile and her fingers would hover over the keys. _Maybe you shouldn't come,_ she could type out. Or, _it turns out I won't have time for lunch that day_ — _can we reschedule?_

But she wanted to see him so badly. Her selfish desire to see him again, damn the consequences, always won out.

She dealt with her fears in other ways. For the first time in ages, she got a manicure and pedicure, and she got her hair done, and she spent hours going back and forth on possible outfits. Her current clothes were all beloved pieces that she had acquired in the last few years, either new or thrifted, from her most beloved designers. They were all clothes that Joffrey, and Ramsay, and all of the other men she had been with, would have hated. They were wearable art; they were not designed to make her more appealing to the average man.

So she went to Harrod's and impulsively bought several new outfits, all of which reeked of Sansa Bolton—not Sansa Stark. They were simple, approachable, and made the most of her figure. And standing in her bedroom the night before her reunion with Jon, Sansa had another epiphany.

This was how it had always happened.

She would make little allowances, and reduce herself in small, nearly imperceptible ways, in the beginning. Joffrey hadn't liked her to be taller than him, so she'd stopped wearing stilettos—even though she loved high heels. Ramsay had sneered at her love for over-the-top designers like Rei Kawakubo, so she'd started exclusively wearing simple but sexy pieces from the likes of Armani, even though she sighed with longing every time she passed a display for Erdem or Chanel. She had diminished herself to appeal to the men in her life, and it had snowballed. She had gone from changing what shoes she purchased to having to use cover-up to hide the bruises that Ramsay had given her.

This was how it started. Soon she'd be playing dumb, laughing at jokes that weren't funny, feigning interest in things she hated, pretending not to know better when he said something incorrect. Ramsay had once insisted that World War II had ended in 1943, and instead of correcting him, though she knew he was wrong, she had simply agreed with him, knowing that to disagree would only prompt problems for her.

Sansa practically tore off the new clothes she had bought in her haste to run from that old version of herself—from Sansa Bolton.

"Fuck it," she said in the silence of her own flat as she stood before her mirror, having changed into one of her favorite tops. It was a loudly-patterned, boxy style that hid her figure, but one that she had first spotted in _Vogue_ and vowed to hunt down. She loved it without reservation, just as she loved the dark green polish she had chosen for her manicure, just as she loved the heels that made her taller than most men.

Jon might not like it. He might make the face that Ramsay had made when she had shown him some of the pieces she'd selected to sell in her boutique, might sneer at her the way Joffrey had when she had confessed to him that her favorite movie was _Cinderella._

So what if he did?

She didn't need Jon Snow. She just wanted him.

And if he didn't want her, if he didn't want her exactly as she was—as silly Sansa Stark, who loved fashion, who had never been a war hero, who read _Vogue_ cover-to-cover, and who had only recently learned how to change a tyre—well, he could go fuck himself.

* * *

Jon had always avoided London. After his time in the army, he had found it to be too much drama and noise, and after taking up the post as a park ranger, he'd not had any reason to go. Ygritte had hated it, too. Their little cabin in the woods had felt like a refuge from the meaningless complications that the rest of the world wanted to impose on them. They had thought they were chasing freedom.

But as Jon attempted to pack for his journey, he realized that the thing he feared most was freedom.

Was this—chasing Sansa—what he wanted?

Jon packed, and left Ghost and his cabin in the capable (if perhaps clinically depressed) hands of his army friend, Edd.

"Hope it works out for you, mate. ...Even though more than half of all relationships end in divorce," Edd had told him as Jon had shoved his duffle bag into the passenger seat of his truck.

He didn't know what he wanted.

Jon left his truck in long-term parking, and took a bus to a train that would take him into London. He sat on the train, hunched over his duffle bag, while his new mobile vibrated incessantly with text messages from Sam (none of which he read. They would all be links to stupid Youtube videos, or more gifs, or more blurry pictures of Gilly).

What did he want?

He had never asked himself before.

His days of obligation were over; he had the freedom to do exactly as he wanted.

So what did he want?

Sodden countryside whizzed by in a blur; the only thing that he knew for certain that he wanted was to destroy Ramsay Bolton.

He was perhaps at his best when he was needed, when there was something that must be done, someone who must be saved. It had always been that way. Most men felt they lost themselves in the army, but in fighting for his country, Jon had never felt more himself. Every other moment of his life he felt he was wearing a mask.

Most men had to be molded into soldiers; Jon feared he was a soldier who had never quite molded himself into a man.

Every mission, he had been the first to jump into the line of fire, the first to kick down the door, the first to jump out of the transport. Remembering his own actions gave him chills now, because he had done those things with such ease. Everyone else around him, even Ygritte, had been worn down by war. They had seen too much. But he had been like steel, coming out of those tragedies unscathed.

What was wrong with him? Was he callous, was he cruel? Why was it that he could calmly sit on the London Underground, plotting ways of making another man suffer by his own hand, yet he could also be paralyzed with fear at the mere idea of touching a woman?

At last, Jon had stepped off the tube and found himself walking through manicured streets as quiet as a library. Even the sunlight seemed prettier here than the rest of London. Belgravia, home of Ramsay Bolton (and formerly of Sansa Bolton), was an expensive and utterly picturesque haven. The noise and clutter of London faded away, and he felt like he had stepped into a victorian novel.

Most of the time, Jon was lost in his own head, but in moments like this, he was one with his surroundings. Colours seemed brighter, edges seemed sharper. He could smell new paint—a facade was being repainted—and could taste the wet floral from a flower delivery truck that had just pulled to a stop. Its back was open, revealing thousands of sopping wet fuchsia roses; hundreds of eerie, spider-like ivory orchids.

It was easy to imagine the Sansa from the newspaper in Belgravia. She would have been as much a part of the scenery as the flower truck, or the pastel facades and gleaming black sash windows, or the shining black cars with suited drivers. He could easily picture that bright copper hair catching the light as she stepped out her front door, her expensive heels clacking on the slate steps, as she worried about dresses for galas, and dinner reservations, and whether Ramsay's suits were done at the tailor's.

But imagining the real Sansa— _his_ Sansa, the one who had pulled him from his truck and saved his life—living and breathing here was impossible. For all of her love for pretty things, for all of her delicate, upper-class beauty, Sansa had never been meant to be a kept woman. She was too capable, too practical, and too clever.

Jon didn't smoke but he knew enough about recon to know he needed a prop: he lit a cigarette and lingered on the corner and pretended to look at his mobile—he still didn't understand how to really use the thing, though Sam had shown him multiple times—while he waited.

The door of Ramsay Bolton's home opened. A man in an immaculately tailored suit stepped out, followed by a weak-chinned man who was frantically rolling a lint brush over the man's suit, talking rapidly.

This was Ramsay Bolton.

Jon knew old money when he saw it, and Ramsay Bolton was not old money. His suit was a little too tailored, his shoes a little too shiny. He wore nothing of heirloom quality, and the voice he used to bark some insult at the helpless, pathetic man following him was just a little too loud.

It gave Jon a twinge of satisfaction. If he recognized it, then others did as well. No matter how hard Ramsay tried to project an image of old money—marrying Sansa for her old money name, wearing exclusively bespoke suits, buying a house in Belgravia that he likely could not actually afford—he would never quite fit in with this world. New money, no matter how large the account, always carried a bit of shame with it among these people. Ramsay Bolton may have inherited his father's name, but it was all too clear that he had inherited nothing else.

Jon was walking, rapidly, a ringing in his ears, towards Ramsay Bolton. All of his plans, all of his strategizing: he tossed all of these aside. But he was not blinded by his anger; rather, he had never seen better. Ramsay Bolton, who had terrorized and scarred Sansa, was in crystal clarity before him.

The other man stopped in opening the car door for Ramsay; both men turned to find Jon approaching them. He strode toward them with purpose. He wasn't afraid. When it came to saving others, he was never afraid, and he never failed.

Jon met Ramsay Bolton's bright blue eyes. They were a curious, burned-out blue, and they glimmered with cleverness.

"Can I help you?" Ramsay asked, arching his brows.

Oh, but he was a snake.

That voice—with his fake London accent—was so innocent. Here was a false man, here was a man constructed of lies. Here was a master of disguise. No wonder Sansa had fallen for him. "You look a bit lost, chum," Ramsay added lightly.

 _Chum. How public school of you,_ he thought, wanting to laugh. Ramsay had never gone to public school—it was just another part of his act.

Jon had imagined so many different ways this could go: confrontations on the street, keying Ramsay's car, breaking into Ramsay's home and destroying all of his things—but his hands were stilled. All of the things he wanted to say crashed on his tongue at once.

He could have thoughtlessly beat this man to a bloody pulp, and smeared him all over the immaculate Belgravia sidewalks. But what then?

Sansa had already saved herself. She didn't need him.

What was it that he really wanted?

Jon thought of the Sansa he knew: the Sansa set aglow by firelight, the Sansa asleep in the hospital with Ghost at her feet, the Sansa who had wiped the muddy footprints from his floor.

She did not need him to save her. She had already saved herself. Ramsay had torn her down, and she was rebuilding herself, brick by brick.

He wanted to help her rebuild her life, and he wanted to be in it. As much as he wanted to hurt Ramsay, he wanted to love Sansa more. If he did this thing—if he harmed Ramsay—it would forever connect him to Ramsay, in Sansa's mind. She had done so much to break free from her past.

Abruptly he was disgusted by his own audacity, in planning to harm Ramsay. It would make him feel good, but it would hurt Sansa so much more.

Sansa Stark was what he wanted.

"Sorry," Jon finally said, "I thought you were someone else. I thought I recognized you."

"...You alright?" Ramsay asked after a moment, peering at Jon. "Is there someone we can call?"

Jon could have laughed.

 _Don't look so smug, Bolton._

It was merely a split-second epiphany that separated Ramsay Bolton from this universe, in which he was unharmed, and one in which Jon ripped his face off. Really, it was Sansa's strength and resilience that saved Ramsay now. Jon smiled at Ramsay Bolton.

"No, I'm good, thanks. Didn't mean to frighten you." He clapped a hand to Ramsay's arm, and watched the man's bright blue eyes flash with dislike. _Funny that you don't like being touched, you fucker,_ he thought venemously. _How many people have you hurt?_ "Have a good one."

He gave Ramsay Bolton an exhilarated smile, and then turned on his heel and walked away.

* * *

Clapton was in Hackney, and over the journey, Jon watched the pastel-coloured houses and black sash windows morph into something grittier, grimier. Gone were the delivery trucks, the sleek black cabs, the tidy front gardens. Craft breweries and converted warehouses blasted music that he distinctly sensed he was beyond the age of being able to 'get,' and the graffiti was intentional, and it seemed like every bloke here had the same hair as him. Shabby but brightly-coloured house-boats bobbed along on the river, and young families, the parents with dyed hair and tattoos, sat on the grass along the river, eating food from mason jars and smoking herbal cigarettes.

Beyond the Wall was in a converted warehouse space. Jon's legs felt strangely weak, and he felt lightheaded. This place, with its cool brick and steel facade, was not a place that would ever make sense to him.

But he'd come all this way. And he wanted Sansa Stark.

He pushed open the door and was nearly bulldozed by a slender girl with doe-like eyes and gloriously thick brown hair. She was clad in the tiniest, most perfunctory of sports bras, and shorts that were barely worthy of the title. She had a wide, appealing smile that she flashed at him now.

"Sorry about that!" she said brightly, looking him over with those luminous eyes. "I don't think we've met-"

"Margaery, stop charming people," came a terse voice from behind her. Over the girl's shoulder, Jon saw a short girl, with half of her head shaved and the other haphazardly pushed behind her ear, wearing an overlarge black tee with the sleeves hacked off. She was tiny as a pixie, but she was all muscle. A highly detailed wolf tattoo covered one tiny, well-defined bicep.

This had to be Arya.

Her dark clever eyes alighted on Jon, recognition gleaming in them.

"You're not a client. Margaery, go away," she ordered, dropping a clipboard at the front desk and walking over to them.

"Bye, Arya," Margaery said sardonically, but not before flashing a wink at Jon and then skipping off.

"I'm here to see Sansa Stark," Jon explained.

"You're Jon Snow," she deduced immediately. "We googled you, you know. I recognized you from the pictures."

An extremely well-built man with brutally short hair and a tattoo of a bull on his arm joined them. Jon immediately could that he too was former military—he had never seen him before, but he could always tell. He was looking at Jon like he knew him, too, and Jon supposed he must have been part of the 'we' that Arya had just mentioned. "I'm Arya, Sansa's sister. This is Gendry, my business partner."

Jon would have bet any amount of money that Gendry was more than a business partner to Arya, but he was too preoccupied with his anxiety to think on it further. His palms were growing damp with fear, his heart was in his throat. "Follow me—Sansa's in the office...as usual."

"No, I'll show him. Your class is starting next," Gendry said quickly, glancing at the clock on the wall. "You can come with me," he added, gesturing for Jon to walk with him.

They wended their way through the gym. Its central feature was the rock-climbing wall, at which a half dozen scantily-clad women were currently gathered. A man with fiery red hair and a thick, nearly-absurd beard was instructing them, with a very tall blonde woman standing next to him. For whatever reason, she looked like her patience was wearing rather thin. Different music played throughout the areas of the gym, all suited to the different activities, and the decor was an effective mix of rustic and modern, making the most of the warehouse space while adding visual nods to the outdoors.

Past the rock-climbing wall, there were kettle bells and free weights, and then a long, long line of treadmills, all of them in use. The clientele were overall rather young, and looked well-to-do. Sansa had been wise about where to set up the gym.

Gendry led him to a door in the paneled wood wall that he almost would have missed. It swung inward, and then they were in a decidedly undecorated hallway with ugly fluorescent lighting.

"This area still needs a makeover, but we haven't had the time," Gendry was explaining. "Sansa complains about it literally every time she comes through here."

Jon couldn't help but smirk at that as they reached a door at the end of the hallway. Gendry knocked and then pushed it open. "Boss lady," he called, "you've got a visitor." Then he nodded with his chin for Jon to go inside.

This was the moment. Jon drew in a deep breath and steeled himself. He'd never had to think about his choices, back in the army.

Freedom was hard. He missed being told what to do.

Jon pushed past the door and went inside Sansa's office.

The office was in the middle of being decorated: boxes of framed pictures sat atop an elegant console table, waiting to be put up, and her desk was littered with paint chips, but these had been somewhat lost under mountains of paperwork.

And there she was.

* * *

Sansa was frowning at an email she'd gotten when she heard Gendry's voice. "Boss lady, you've got a visitor."

She didn't register the words until she heard the door shut again, and she looked up in surprise at the sound.

And there he was.

Jon Snow was standing in her office, looking shy, biting his lip, but his eyes were warm as he matched her gaze. Warmth rushed along her skin. For a moment, she could not find her words. Even the month that they had been apart felt too long; she could only drink in the sight of him. The idea that they could have miscalculated, that she could have ever possibly imagined the feelings between them, now felt laughable. Her legs were weak; she was glad she was sitting down.

None of her fears mattered for a moment, because he was smiling at her like looking at her was his favorite thing to do.

* * *

His mouth went dry. It had only been a month since he had seen her but it felt like it'd been years. He registered that Gendry had left them alone and he heard the door click shut.

"You came!" Sansa said, finally, her face flushed with happiness. "Sorry for the mess. We only just moved, and I'm still organizing everything."

"The gym is amazing, Sansa," he said before he could lose his courage. He knew his voice was a dead giveaway; how could she not possibly know the intensity of his feelings? "It's so..." he searched for the words, "...cool, I think. Not that I'm an expert. It's so busy, though. Every treadmill was full."

"Well, that's always how gyms are when they first open. Everyone loves to try out a new gym," she said pragmatically. He was seeing flashes of the woman who had organized this: the same woman who had pulled him from his truck and saved his life. The woman who had cried and fallen into the river seemed quite a long way away.

He wished he could tell her this, but perhaps there was no need. _I know you're not helpless._ "No, the real trick will be finding a way to sustain even half of this attendance," she continued. "So have you eaten yet? I was just getting ready to take a break for lunch."

"I haven't."

Sansa got to her feet. She was wearing complicated, fashionable clothing that he would never understand, and her hair was gleaming like it had been lacquered. She was a far different-looking woman from the woman he had spent time with in the woods, and he felt another stab of misgiving. She looked like some sort of goddess; he was wearing his nicest shirt and newest jeans but he still sensed that he looked like he'd just rolled around in the woods.

 _Why not give it a shot?_

"You'll blend in around here quite well, you know, with that man-bun," she teased as she slid on her trench coat. "So, I think I know of a little place you'll like. Everything's rather pretentious around here, but there are plenty of decent pubs that don't feel like they're so desperate to be cool," she was saying. Jon followed her out of the office.

Gendry and Arya were standing in the corridor, and they hastily pretended they hadn't been listening through the door. "We're going to get lunch. I'm assuming you've met Arya as well," Sansa said, gesturing to her sister.

"Don't go to the Crooked Billet, everyone goes there," Arya ordered as they walked past, and Jon gave her and Gendry a little wave.

"Ugh, please. I would never," Sansa snorted, and she led him out a back door, onto the street.

A light rain was falling and they pulled up their hoods. "We're going to the Clapton Hart. It's this sort of shabby-chic pub."

"You go there a lot?"

"God, no. I can't afford to go out much right now, and honestly I've been working so much that I barely have the time." In spite of her harried words, Sansa was practically glowing. She was radiant. He couldn't take his eyes off her. "I used to like going out more, I think. Arya says I'm too old for this neighborhood, and maybe that's it. Obviously, I don't live here, and where I'm living right now, it's not really conducive to nights out on the town."

"Well, _I_ go out all the time," Jon joked a little lamely. Sansa sniggered.

"I suppose Ghost is your wing-man?" she teased back. "How is Ghost?" Their arms brushed as they walked, and they pretended they didn't notice.

"Oh, you know. Same as always." _He misses you_ , Jon toyed with saying, but he couldn't make his mouth form the words. He couldn't keep using his dog as an excuse to be near Sansa. At some point, he'd have to admit his feelings.

They came to a shabby pub fronted by wooden tables that were jam-packed with arty, hipster types, and Jon felt another stab of misgiving as Sansa led him inside. He was thoroughly out of his element here. Inside it was cosy, though, and they immediately found a low table in the corner. His limbs felt useless; he was a marionette, pulled by strings of his own awkwardness, his movements jerky and strange.

"Sit here; I'll get us a round," Sansa began, shrugging out of her coat.

"Absolutely not," Jon interrupted. "You sit down."

"Are you trying to boss me around?" Sansa asked playfully. Jon found himself again struck by how happy she seemed. He couldn't help but grin, even as he felt his heart twisting painfully. He could never exist in London, and she seemed to thrive in it better than anyone.

"I'm not _trying_ ," he shot back, hoping his melancholy wouldn't show. _I'm turning into Edd,_ he mused. Sansa bit her lip to stop from laughing and sat down.

"Fine," she conceded.

Jon hadn't had a drink in years, and as he went to the counter, he toyed with the idea of ordering a soda. It would be weird. It would draw attention to how weird he had become, in his grief.

"Have you been served yet?" the bartender asked him in a sharp, quick voice, and he had no time to debate—he blindly ordered two pints of the first beer he recognized among the taps. He felt like he was running helplessly down a hill, pulled along by gravity. This was too fast; he had no time to think.

He brought the pints back to their table in the corner. Sansa had been looking at her mobile but she set it back in her purse and beamed at him.

"What did you get?"

"Honestly, I don't even know. I just pointed at one," he confessed, and she snorted.

"I always draw a blank when I'm ordering drinks," she admitted. "I always want to order something cool or unusual, but when it comes down to it I just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind."

"I wouldn't have guessed that about you."

"Ah, if only I were as cool as you make me sound," she sighed wistfully.

They clinked their glasses together and then he took a long swig. The beer was bitter but smooth. For a moment, he could almost pretend they were just two Londoners, on a normal date.

But he'd never been one to fall prey to illusions, no matter how tempting they might be. They were not two Londoners on a normal date.

* * *

Sansa watched Jon walk to the bar to order their drinks, and she felt her mobile buzzing.

The first text was from Renly.

 _Now that is a BEAUTIFUL man. Well-played, Stark._

She snorted even though she was blushing, but didn't respond to the text. She hadn't even known Renly was at the gym.

The next text was from Gendry.

 _honestly i would hit taht liek a train if i werent a dude_

"Oh, _really_ mature," she muttered under her breath, as Gendry added a rather graphic GIF to more fully express his sentiments.

Arya had also texted her.

 _He's like a really hot puppy dog. Also Gendry says he's obviously in love with you._

She was about to reply when she realized Jon was coming back to their table, and she hastily stowed her mobile, feeling her cheeks flush once more.

Why did his gaze make her feel so warm? _Brave, gentle, strong._ He hadn't touched her yet, not intentionally, but she wanted him to, more than anything. And even though he was so shy, even though he hadn't touched her yet, there was something in the depth of his eyes that made her feel like he would know how to.

 _But I don't know how to._ Her self-consciousness was the string keeping her tied to reality.

She'd never really had sex. Not the kind that people wrote about, not the kind that people wanted. And it was all too clear that Jon had. He would know what to do. She wouldn't.

But he was listening to her, he was taking an interest, and her self-consciousness began to melt away. It wouldn't matter to him, she thought. He wouldn't think less of her.

* * *

Their lunch passed too quickly. Sansa chatted happily about the party, and Jon relayed his journey to acquiring his first mobile phone, and she laughed in all the right places. But their first pints were finished, and then, suddenly, their second pints were too, and they had somehow already finished their food. Once again Jon sensed a penultimate moment approaching.

They shrugged into their coats, and began the walk back to the gym, suddenly in strained silence.

He felt heavy, he was lost. Had he already failed?

"I've been dating," she said slowly. They stopped at a crosswalk and a bus swerved past them, blowing their hair about their faces.

"Oh." He paused, watching the bus drive away, using it to not look at Sansa. He knew his eyes would give away everything. "H-how is that going?"

They crossed the street; they were nearly at the gym now. Sansa seemed to be weighing her words carefully.

"Well...every man I meet, I find myself wondering whether he'd have stopped and helped me in the woods, that day. And each time, I've concluded that they wouldn't have, unless there was something in it for them."

They turned to face each other as they came to a stop in front of the gym.

This was a confession. She was coming clean.

It was time for him to do the same thing.

"I came to London to tell you I haven't stopped thinking about you," Jon said, "but you're so happy here, Sansa, and I could never be happy here."

She reached out suddenly, to grab his hand, but he reflexively pulled away before she could. He didn't know why he'd done it. He wanted more than anything to touch her.

"We could make something work," she argued, in spite of the way her face had fallen when he'd pulled away.

"How? How could it possibly work?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't need the same things I needed in my twenties, though. We could figure it out for ourselves. We could make our own rules."

"I don't know that that's how it works, Sansa," he said sadly.

She drew in a shaking breath, and looked away, her hair swinging with the movement.

"I-I should go in. I've got to get ready. I'll…see you tonight," she stammered.

Jon watched Sansa walk back into the gym. He'd not expected things to come to this—he'd not ever really believed that she might feel the same way. The only courses of possibility that he had considered involved him trying to convince her, not the other way round. Standing there at the mouth of the gym, watching other men—London men, with perfect haircuts and expensive trainers, who knew cool pubs to go to and who knew how to use their mobiles properly—he wanted to run back in and demand why Sansa Stark would ever want someone like him.

And then Arya popped out and darted out to meet him.

"Don't wear a suit to this thing, by the way," she said without preamble. Jon stared at her, balked at her words.

"How-"

"Gendry's ex-army too, and I had to tell him the same thing a long time ago. No suits."

"Then what am I supposed to-"

"Jeans, and a suit jacket over a tee shirt would work, if you don't have anything else with you," she said immediately. "Don't do anything to your hair, though."

Jon self-consciously ran a hand over his hair. Arya was smiling wryly at him.

"Well, see you tonight!" And then, quick as a flash, she ran back in.


	5. Chapter 5

Part Five

* * *

' _And I was broke,_

 _I was on my knees._

 _You said, 'yes,'_

 _As I said, 'please.''_

* * *

Sansa beelined for her office, her eyes cast down, trying to avoid striking up a conversation with anyone. She was good at masking her feelings when she had to, but she didn't do that anymore—on the other hand, she didn't feel like trying to explain to anyone why she was so miserable, either.

 _I'm so stupid. I'm always so stupid._ Stupid, stupid, stupid. Sansa locked the door to her office and sat behind her desk, still wrapped in her coat. God, the look on Jon's face when she'd reached for him… Her eyes burned with angry tears. Why had he come to London, then, if the idea of her touching his hand was clearly _so_ repellent to him?

She had not forgotten Arya's text. _Gendry says he's obviously in love with you._ Had her friends simply been telling her what they thought she wanted to hear? Just like with Joffrey: _he's lovely, and so handsome!_ Just like with her shop: _of course it'll be a success!_ Just like with Ramsay: _we're so happy for you!_

Then again, Arya hadn't been known to lie to her before. It had been a point of contention in their youth, but these days it was the very thing linking them together, forever. They didn't lie to each other. Also, to be completely fair, she and Arya had also stopped speaking after their parents' and Robb's death, and had only reunited after Sansa had split from Ramsay. Arya had not been among those congratulating her on marrying Ramsay because of their estrangement, but even if they had not been estranged, she knew Arya would never have lied to her.

Sansa blinked rapidly, trying to staunch the flow of tears. Why was she so upset about this? Just the prior night she had stood before her mirror and told herself that Jon Snow could go fuck himself if he didn't want her just as she was. Where had all of that confidence and independence gone?

She felt small again. She felt stupid again.

Maybe the feeling she had had lately—that she was smart, that she was capable, that she didn't need to be attached to anyone—had just been an illusion. Maybe she hadn't changed at all.

Her mobile buzzed, and Sansa snatched at it, hoping it would be Jon, but it was merely her contact from the beer garden. Her whole being fell when she saw it was not Jon.

 _You're so stupid,_ Joffrey had sneered at her in front of their friends.

 _What, are you going to cry now?_ Ramsay had goaded her after the first time he had hit her.

Now she was crying in earnest, and she hated herself all the more for it. Why was a simple rejection turning her into this mess?

 _You're so stupid._

 _Are you going to cry now?_

She thought of the look on Jon's face again. He hadn't called her stupid, he hadn't hit her—but he'd hurt her all the same.

 _I came to London to tell you I haven't stopped thinking about you,_ he'd said. _But you're so happy here, and I could never be happy here._

Why did this hurt more than what Joffrey had said, what Ramsay had done? Why did this rip her apart just as swiftly? Why was she so fragile?

She had told herself she didn't need Jon Snow. She had been so proud of herself for not sleeping in his shirt—but was that not, in and of itself, pathetic? Arya would not have even thought of sleeping in his shirt. Brienne might have used the shirt because it meant one less shirt to buy later, but it would have had nothing to do with romantic feelings. Margaery would have simply seduced him in his cabin and worn the shirt the next day over coffee and toast.

None of these women would have had cause for such pathetic pride, for not becoming obsessed with him.

 _You're so stupid._

There came a knock on her door, and Sansa felt another burst of rage. Why couldn't she have this moment in peace? She frantically wiped under her eyes, hoping her mascara had not smeared too much, and cleared her throat.

"H-hold on," she said, her voice still watery. "The door's locked."

She got up and hastily shrugged out of her coat, then unlocked the door, expecting it to be Brienne (Brienne was the only one who ever politely knocked).

Uncle Petyr was standing in the hallway, clad in one of his signature three-piece suits, the maroon silk ascot at his throat patterned with mockingbirds. Sansa watched his clever eyes perceive her appearance. Others might not have noticed she had been crying, but Petyr always did.

"Sansa," he said in a hushed, soothing voice. "You look terrible. What's happened? Who's hurt you?"

He moved to touch her on the arm, and Sansa sidestepped his touch.

"Nothing's happened," she said politely, though her voice was flat. "What are you talking about?"

It was like he had some sort of sixth sense for when she was hurting. In the past it had been a source of relief, but today it made her angry.

Why did men only want her when she was unhappy? Why did no one want her when she succeeded?

"You look as though you've been crying," he explained, his voice so soft, so considerate. "Is it Bolton?" His dark eyes were gleaming, in spite of the hushed voice. He reminded her of a vulture.

"Must be a cold coming on," she said, not budging from the door. "Did you want something?"

"Only to help you. I know how much work can go into these events, and I thought you could use an extra head."

"That's kind of you, but I think my head's enough, thanks. If that's all, I'm actually rather busy at the moment," she said meaningfully. Petyr's lips quirked.

She could practically _hear_ the gears whirring in his head.

"I heard you had a lunch date—you must be very busy indeed," he said slyly. "Handsome man. I saw him outside as I was coming in, I think. He was very engaged in talking to—oh, what was her name?" Petyr said ponderously, tapping a finger against his lips. "Margaret? You know, the model."

He wanted her wounded.

Sansa smiled at him. Or, rather, she bared her teeth.

"That's odd. …Almost unbelievable, in fact. Margaery already was here, working out, this morning. She had to leave for an important photo shoot this afternoon, over in Soho," she said, still polite as ever. She offered Petyr a freezing smile. "It would be odd for her to have come back."

"Yes, odd indeed." Petyr was too accustomed to lying to show that he'd been caught.

"…Well, thanks for stopping by, but I'm quite busy, as I said," Sansa said now. She grabbed hold of the door and began to shut it. "I'll see you tonight!"

And before Petyr could get in another word, she shut the door in his face.

For a long moment she stood there before the door, and at last heard the click of his dress shoes as he walked away. It took a moment to register that her hands were shaking.

No one wanted her happy.

Rage boiled over like lava.

"Fuck _everyone_ ," she hissed furiously, at no one.

Her first, clawing instinct was to text Margaery, to confirm that Margaery had not, in fact, been at the gym just now, attempting to seduce Jon. As much as Sansa loved Margaery, the beautiful model had swept in and stolen men from her before.

But Jon didn't belong to her.

And, more importantly, she had shit to do.

Sansa stomped to her desk, and furiously resumed her work in getting all of the last-minute details in place for the party with a renewed gusto. She took calls from investors that had been invited, and laughed with and charmed them like few could.

She was _not_ stupid, and she certainly was not going to cry any more over any of this, over any of these men. She was going to be happier than she had ever been in the whole of her life, if for no other reason than pure spite.

* * *

Jon felt ridiculous.

He was standing in front of the mirror in his hotel room, clad in jeans, a black tee shirt, and the jacket from the suit he had brought and planned to wear.

His mobile was in his hand. He had already taken the picture. Now he just had to send it.

 _Bloody redheads_ , he thought furiously. It was all Sansa's fault that he had been reduced to this: a man closer to forty than thirty, texting pictures of his outfit to his best friend like a teenager.

 _Why not give it a shot?_ He held onto Gilly's words perhaps a little too tightly. He'd never just given things a shot—he had always, always planned.

Then again, he'd never actually been _good_ at planning.

He hit 'send.'

Sam, rather unhelpfully, responded almost immediately with a rather suggestive GIF.

 _I don't care what YOU think. What does Gilly think?_ Jon retorted via text.

Jon set his mobile back down after sending the text, and paced about his hotel room. He wished Ghost were here. He wished he were cool enough to know what to wear to parties in London beer gardens. He wished he had not pulled away when Sansa had reached for him. He wished that he did not spend so much time thinking about how much he'd like to touch Sansa.

It felt like a betrayal of Ygritte, to be so consumed by lust within just a few years of losing her. He had been so convinced that he would never meet someone worth loving again, and now here he was, wearing an outfit that made no sense to him, texting pictures of himself to his friends, in a hotel room in London. He'd always known that love (and lust) made you do stupid things, and here was proof. He didn't even know Sansa well enough to love her; he just knew he was willing to make himself look like a fool just for the chance to.

So _why_ had he pulled away, when Sansa had reached for his hand?

He still didn't know why. It had gone against his deepest desire, the desire he had admittedly begun to feel the moment he'd woken up in hospital and had seen her curled up in the chair with Ghost. She was a forest to be explored: endless, strong, complicated, and not fully knowable. He was slow to desire but quick to love, and it had always been his downfall. He was a fool, thinking with his heart and not his head.

Beautiful women had never moved him on their beauty alone. Meaningless, shallow lust had never attracted him. He had been a virgin when he'd met Ygritte, by his own choice. Opportunities had come, and he had passed them over, all the while feeling shamed and wondering if it made him less of a man. Now he knew that he was by nature selective and did not want what was easy to get and easy to lose. He was a seeker of depth; beauty alone did not inspire lust within him. Perhaps his life would have been easier if it had.

He could count the number of women he had wanted in his life on one hand. Maybe that was why he was acting like such a damn fool.

His mobile vibrated, and Jon leapt for it almost acrobatically.

 _this is Gilly! Gilly likes it v much!_

Jon looked at his reflection once more.

 _I don't look weird?_

 _no, not at all. u look v handsome and relaxed :o)_

 _What is that face?_

 _it has a nose!_

Jon snorted and set his mobile back down. He had no other options—the shops would all be closed by now, and it wasn't like he would have known what to buy, either.

This was the final act: he would attend the party, and accept whatever the outcome. If Sansa did not want him, or if they decided not to pursue whatever this thing was between them…well, there might not be another.

He thought of Ygritte. No love could eclipse her. Even if he came to feel as strongly for Sansa as he had for Ygritte, it would be different—not lesser, just different. Love was as varied as the people who received it.

Most people didn't even get _one_ great love in their lives. If Ygritte were his last, he figured he would still be lucky.

Thus, Jon set out for the beer garden on foot. The neighborhood was coming alive. The tattooed and dreadlocked patrons of pubs seemed to spill forth from the doors, crowding the sidewalks, filling the air with the rhythm of laughter and small talk. The River Lea glittered up ahead, and the lights from the houseboats silhouetted the bicyclists that rushed alongside it. The beer garden's pub, with its London stock brick and gabled façade, soon came into view.

It was too soon. He didn't feel ready yet. He didn't feel like he had fully inhabited himself yet; he was too lost in the clouds still. Jon stood on the sidewalk in front of the beer garden for a moment, trying to gather himself all in one place, trying to distill the best parts of him into himself. For all of the times he had jumped into the thick of a warzone, stepping into a party was so much more terrifying. He knew exactly one person here, and she would be busy the whole night. He'd look like an idiot, probably lingering in the corner by himself…

He could hear laughter coming from the other side of the low, stock brick wall; distinctly he heard Sansa introducing one group of people to another. His legs seemed to twitch on their own, like they moved upon hearing her voice.

That by itself was enough for him. It didn't matter if he looked like a fool; it didn't matter if this whole thing between them—whatever the hell it was—dissolved in a cloud of smoke. For better or for worse, Sansa had resurrected him.

No one else had been able to draw him away from his cabin in the few years since Ygritte's death; no one else had been able to coax him into joining life again. If nothing else, she had reminded him of what it was like to have things mean something, to care about the outcome, to feel deeply for something or someone.

And for someone who had once fought so hard for the lives of others, he could see now that he had lost sight of himself and what mattered to him in his grief. Without a larger purpose, without doing something that _meant_ something to him, he was adrift.

The last time his life had had meaning, he had watched it wither and die before his eyes. No bravery, no act of selflessness, no force of strength, could have stopped it. His strength, his speed, and his sniper's eyes—these had been worthless against Ygritte's last enemy. He had been utterly powerless.

Perhaps that was why he was so filled with hatred when he thought of what Ramsay had done to Sansa; perhaps that was why her soul had felt so familiar to him from the very moment he had watched her fall into the river. He knew what it was like to have your power taken from you—it was unbearable. He knew now that it was the worst thing that could happen to a person.

The powerlessness had killed him, and Sansa had brought him back to life.

She had reminded him who he was. She had reminded him that life without purpose was not living.

Jon pushed through the gate into the beer garden.

* * *

Sansa was just in the middle of hunting down where the next round of hors d'oeuvres had gotten to when _he_ walked in.

Jon Snow walked into the beer garden, and she forgot what she was saying to one of the waiters mid-sentence.

Across the beer garden their eyes met, and she felt her whole being prickle with warmth. Even after that humiliating confession, he had come anyway. He looked good, too—she wondered if he had received some styling advice. Then again, he'd looked damn good to her in his park ranger uniform, too. She watched his lips twist into a fond smile, and her own lips curved automatically in response, like they were connected, like they were mirrored. The twinkle lights strung overhead edged him in gold once more. He always looked like he'd been touched by magic to her; she wondered if other people saw him this way as well. Did he take everyone's breath away? Did he make everyone believe in fairytales again? The light shining from him was almost too bright.

He gave her a short wave, and then immediately turned to grab a beer from a waiter passing by. Breaking eye contact was like having the sun put out, but at the same time, she felt even warmer now. Gendry swept in rather heroically, stealing Jon's attention, and Jon leapt into the conversation with an enthusiasm that she knew was uncharacteristic for him. _He doesn't want me to worry about him,_ she realized abruptly.

He wanted her to succeed. He did not want to take away from her night. He wanted this to be about her, not him.

He wanted her to be happy.

She thought of how he'd snatched his hand from hers earlier, and it was almost funny how different that moment looked from this angle. He was cautious, and he was not one to be carried away by his feelings—and yet the irony was that she had never known someone to have feelings with such depth and complexity. He did not take this thing between them—whatever it was—lightly, and he would not be caught up in the moment. He only wanted it if it was worth having.

She had never stood so tall. She turned back to the somewhat bewildered waiter with a brilliant smile, and resumed her hunt for those hors d'oeuvres.

* * *

Jon was immediately accosted by Gendry, and the relief he felt was embarrassing. He'd felt so sure of himself until he had spotted Sansa, and then the little tower of confidence that he had built moments ago on the sidewalk had toppled over.

He had only been able to wave at her. Every time he saw her she seemed to become a little bit more beautiful, a little bit more mythical, than the time before. She was in her element tonight, too—she had clearly been in the middle of directing one of the waiters when he'd walked in. Set aglow by the string lights, surrounded by stylishly-dressed investors—the garden was absolutely jam-packed with guests—she had smiled at him, and his mind had gone blank with desire.

Thank god for Gendry who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, his enthusiastic greeting jarring Jon enough to remember himself.

"How did you know not to wear a suit?" Gendry complained, as they took their beers to a quieter corner.

"Arya told me," Jon confessed. He was racking his brains for a possible conversation topic—he needed to make sure Sansa didn't feel responsible for him; he needed to not take up this night of victory—when another voice interrupted them.

"So Gendry's been blathering on about how apparently you're some sort of war hero." He was tall and _extremely_ lean, and his shirt and trousers looked a bit too tight, but somehow it looked appropriate on him. His hair, impeccably styled, was pitch-black, setting off his shrewd blue eyes. Jon thought he was a bit of a Puck figure—gamely and out for fun, and perhaps too clever for his own good.

"Don't mind Renly. He thinks that any conversation that isn't about him is _blathering_ ," Gendry snorted. "Renly, this is Jon-"

"-I know who he is," Renly scoffed. "Between you, Sansa, and Daenerys, I'm not sure who fancies him more." He gave Jon a rather intense once-over. "And I can't say I blame them."

"Dany hasn't met him," Gendry said, just as a woman joined them now. She was wearing a dramatic power suit and had very long, platinum blonde hair.

"No, she hasn't," the woman said imperiously. She was looking at Jon like he was a feast about to be had. "Arya told me about you and I googled you immediately," she informed him. "You may have noticed there's a significant curiosity about you. My name is Daenerys Targaryen. I work in defence, so your army affiliation was of personal interest to me."

"Daenerys is one of our investors," Renly explained to Jon now. "She was the first to jump onboard. She's known for backing female entrepreneurs."

"Sansa is hardly an entrepreneur," Daenerys said analytically, as the three men turned to her. Jon watched her carefully and thought that she enjoyed attention quite a bit. He couldn't decide if he actually liked her or not, but he certainly found her compelling—and beautiful. "She's far too careful and clever to take any actual risks. This is the safest investment I've ever made."

"It does hold a lot of promise. Loras and Marg have sunk a lot of money into it, too," Renly agreed, nodding to Daenerys. "It's a good neighborhood for it, and it hits all the right trends: the rock-climbing, the kettlebells… Sansa struck while the iron was hot."

"No, Sansa was born to do this," Daenerys corrected him. "It's not just an opportune time; she has spearheaded this with more skill than I've ever seen."

"Aside from yourself, of course," Renly teased, though Daenerys merely arched her brows at him and set down her red wine. Jon couldn't help but note that she was the only one not drinking beer.

"Can you name a single other woman who—"

"—JOKE. It was a joke," Gendry interrupted loudly. He leaned closer to Jon to whisper in his ear, "Dany is a _tad_ full of herself, but we love her anyway. …You might say the same about Renly, too…"

There was a rush of an unusual perfume, and then, quite suddenly, Sansa was in their midst.

"Sorry; I've been running around like crazy," she said breathlessly. She held out a tray of what looked like eggrolls. "These have beef and mushroom," she said as Daenerys and Jon each took one, and Gendry took seven.

"I'm pescatarian," Renly informed them loftily, and Gendry choked on his beef roll.

"I watched you eat _six_ chicken kebabs _yesterday,_ you prat."

"I was drunk. It doesn't count," Renly said carelessly, though there was a gleam in his eye. Jon chanced a glance at Sansa, his lips twisting into a grin. Renly did not miss the look between them.

"We were just terrorizing your man," Renly informed her, and Jon felt his face flush. _Your man._ "He was just about to explain his war record to us when Dany butt in."

"Everyone knew his name in the army," Gendry added, nodding to Jon.

The beer garden suddenly felt airless. They were all looking at him expectantly, but Jon had always made a point of never discussing his military career. It was an odd point of tension with most people: if he avoided the topic, they thought he was traumatised and advised him to seek help; if he brought it up, he made everyone uncomfortable immediately. He couldn't win.

"Yes, and everyone knows your name in the pubs, Gendry," Sansa interceded quickly, saving him yet again. "What a legacy!"

Gendry let out a huff in mock-outrage as Renly threw back his head and roared with a surprisingly infectious laughter that got everyone laughing too, even Jon.

"Was Jon your hero, Gendry?" Renly teased insinuatingly after he'd caught his breath. Gendry's face was still flushed from Sansa's joke.

"Of course he was," he insisted. "Though, to be honest, I was never stupid enough to attempt some of the crap I heard he did," he added. Jon found himself laughing again and he took a long swig of his beer.

"I'm sure whatever you heard was just gossip," he told him.

" _Gossip_? You're not telling me all those big, manly, machine-gun-toting men got up to anything so girly as gossip," Renly said, feigning shock.

"Men are worse gossips than women, _especially_ in the army," Daenerys retorted. "Women are too busy getting things done to gossip."

The conversation dissolved into a spirited but silly argument about differences between the sexes in the army, leaving Jon free to observe.

He realized now that both Sansa and Renly had gently steered the conversation to safer territory (although Renly had also been the one to make him uncomfortable in the first place). They were both masterful at that sort of thing, he soon observed. Renly was quick and clever enough to keep the conversation stimulating, and—with Sansa's aid—sensitive enough to subtly change the subject before any real harm was done. It was an art he would never master, and made him think, the more beer he drank, of Ygritte, also painfully blunt and often intentionally tactless. He'd loved her for it, loved the way she seemed to inspire debates wherever she went, loved her fearlessness.

It was hard to imagine that he could fall in love again with someone so dramatically different from Ygritte—chaotic, loud, fearless, temperamental, passionate Ygritte. Sansa was manicured to perfection tonight, her hair immaculate in a way that Ygritte would never have been bothered to attempt, in heels that would have made Ygritte scoff—Ygritte, who was never seen out of trainers or combat boots, even at their wedding—and in a dress that Ygritte would have been sniggering about all evening.

In movies, it was a cliché that the dead spouse would _want_ the widow or widower to move on, to find someone new, to be happy, but Jon knew that had Ygritte and Sansa met, they would have despised each other. Ygritte would have disdained Sansa for her beauty, her manners, and her unapologetically feminine nature, and Sansa, quick to react to perceived criticism, would have been injured and resentful of Ygritte's disdain. Ygritte, so often short-sighted when it came to others, would never have perceived Sansa's depth, and Sansa would have found Ygritte frustratingly vulgar.

He watched Sansa's hair catch the light again. That would have been another thing for Ygritte to hate—after she had had him shave her head, she had stubbornly insisted that she didn't miss her hair, but he'd seen her eyes linger on the long hair of other women too many times to believe her after that. She had buried her other insecurities about her appearance beneath a thick veneer of bravado but losing her hair had been a blow she could not recover from.

If it had been up to Ygritte, she would have picked someone like Arya for him, though in reality she would never have wanted him to move on with someone else at all.

 _Ygritte,_ he thought sadly as he continued to gaze at Sansa, _I promise you'd admire her if you got to know her._

* * *

"Sorry about them," Sansa said in his ear suddenly, sliding in next to him. She'd been off charming the investors, and in the meantime Jon had had multiple beers, and felt strangely warm and wistful. He'd had a rambling talk with Gendry about their deployment and then a surprisingly interesting—but also somewhat disturbing—conversation with Daenerys about assault rifles. She had made quite a lot of eye contact and touched his arm needlessly, and he couldn't say he wasn't extremely flattered, even if he had no interest.

"Don't be," he said, glancing at her. She was taller than him in her heels. She smelled good, too. They leaned against the wall, surveying the party. "Seems like you're a success. Everyone's having a good time."

"Seems like it, but we'll see," she hedged. "Venture capital comes and goes quickly and without warning, and Daenerys—she's probably my biggest investor—is famously temperamental."

"She said you were born to do this," Jon said, looking back at her once more, but Sansa was studying Daenerys carefully.

"She says a lot of things. I don't take people at their word."

"Neither do I," Jon agreed. "I do think she's right, though—that you were born to do this."

"Speaking of which," Sansa began slowly, turning towards him a bit more, "I didn't realize you were such a hero."

"Oh, that," Jon dismissed, his face growing hot. Perhaps he'd had too many beers.

"You know, Gendry still keeps in touch with a lot of his army friends," she said, and Jon realized she was heading towards making a point. "He says most of them aren't working, or even if they are, it's like they're just barely functioning in society. He said it was hard, for a lot of them, to come back."

Jon set his beer down on the wooden table closest to them, and faced Sansa straight on.

"You have something you want to say, so why not just say it?" he asked plainly. Sansa pressed her lips together.

"You're a hero. A figure. You united troops in the army; you could unite them here, too."

Life without purpose wasn't living, but this was more purpose than he felt he had left to give.

"I did what I had to, in Afghanistan. I killed people, Sansa. I did a lot of terrible things." He would not hide this from her. He watched her carefully for her reaction but, to her credit, she was undaunted by his words.

"Are you trying to scare me? It's not like I thought you were planting trees and writing poetry over there," she snarked. "Look, when Gendry realized who you were, and found out you're working as a park ranger, he was shocked. He said it was a waste; he made it sound like you were some sort of icon." She paused, measuring her words carefully. "I don't think you're as happy as you could be, out there alone in the woods. That's all."

He wished he could tell her that she read his soul like others read books, but he could only match her gaze helplessly.

"Wow, can we take the eye-fucking elsewhere?"

"Language, Renly."

It was like they had been doused with ice water. Sansa and Jon both startled and looked to see that Renly had joined them, as well as a tall, well-built man with hazel eyes and curly, mussed hair.

"Sorry. Eye- _lovemaking._ " Renly rolled his eyes. "Is that better?"

"Yes, more accurate, too," the other man agreed. He held out his hand to Jon. "Loras Tyrell."

Jon attempted to recover as he matched Loras' strong handshake. The girl who had smacked into him earlier bounded over to them brightly; Jon realized she was related to Loras. They had the same brightness to their eyes, the same delicate features.

"I told you he was handsome," she sighed, looping her arm in her brother's. Loras looked amused.

"Yes, you and everyone else did," he retorted.

"Sansa has a type," Margaery informed him. "Long, curly hair; pretty eyes…"

"Oh, _god,_ " Sansa groaned, her face flushing. "Please do not—"

"Sansa was in love with Loras," Renly informed Jon. " _Shamelessly_ so."

"He gave me a red rose for Valentine's Day. He showed up on my doorstep and just handed it to me and I saved it for _years,_ " Sansa laughed, her face more pink than he'd ever seen it. Loras sighed.

"It was for her brother," Loras explained, "but when I got to their house, I saw him and his girlfriend snogging in his car—they hadn't even left for their date yet—but I couldn't turn around and leave, because Catelyn had spotted me and invited me in."

"I find it encouraging that you had awkward moments in your adolescence," Renly mused. "I don't blame you, Sansa. I would have kept the rose for years, too."

"I pressed it between my two favorite books and wrapped it in lace," Sansa said wistfully. "Loras was blushing and I just assumed it was for me."

"I really thought I had a shot with Robb. That's the sad part," Loras admitted. "He was so nice to me... Until he thought I was after his little sister, of course," he recalled wryly.

Their conversation was so light, but Jon wondered if it was painful for Sansa to talk about her family who had died like this. He would not have been able to talk so lightly about Ygritte.

Arya finally joined them—she had been held up in deep conversation with a reedy-looking man who apparently worked for Iron Bank.

The conversation dissolved into a wistful nostalgia of growing up together in Harrogate, to which Sansa had plenty of amusing contributions, but he quite suddenly realized that she had gone mute.

The hand clutching her white wine—it was just her and Daenerys drinking wine, though Daenerys drank red—was gripping the glass so tightly that she might break it. No one else had noticed.

Jon followed her gaze to the beer garden's entrance, and almost dropped his own glass.

Ramsay Bolton had entered the beer garden.

He stood out in his suit, with a woman in an extremely elegant black dress and glittering diamonds latched onto his arm. Ramsay was scanning the beer garden, radiating a dangerous, off-kilter energy.

Renly was the next to notice, and then, one by one, the rest of their circle did. Conversation died abruptly as Ramsay pretended to have just spotted Sansa, and he waved gamely before approaching them.

 _Oh, fuck._

He was so fucked.

Recognition gleamed in Ramsay's eyes as Jon met his gaze.

"Why, Sansa, it's been too long," he greeted brightly, holding his arms out as though to embrace her. Sansa stood ramrod straight, regal as a queen.

"Ramsay," she greeted calmly, "you seem to have forgotten the restraining order."

Ramsay ignored her and slowly turned his gaze to Jon.

" _Love_ the dress," Margaery suddenly said, almost wildly, to the woman latched to Ramsay. "It's so …egalitarian…of you to wear last-season. I wore that to a charity ball last year; isn't it surprisingly comfortable?"

Ramsay was not to be deterred.

"Why, we've met," he said softly to Jon. "Did you know he smokes?" he asked Sansa now.

"I don't smoke. You must be confusing me with someone else," Jon said coldly, though he doubted Sansa would buy it.

Despite his cool tone his blood was pounding in his ears and his mouth was full of cotton. He had turned away from Ramsay; he had chosen a different path, and yet the time he had taken to make that choice might end up ruining everything for him.

Jon risked a glance at Sansa, but she was still looking at Ramsay. She stepped forward.

"Ramsay," she said calmly once more, "you have a restraining order. You can leave quietly and we can forget this ever happened, or you can be arrested, and your old friend Varys will get a shot of you being led out by police and he will tweet it, and then write about this in the gossip column for Monday morning."

Her face was a frozen mask; she was steel. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Sansa nodded to someone across the beer garden, and Ramsay glanced over his shoulder. A bald man, resplendent in a ridiculous goldenrod velvet smoking jacket, paused his conversation with a man in a three-piece suit to wave, almost coyly, at Ramsay.

Then the man in the three-piece suit turned, and his swarthy eyes met Ramsay's.

"I had lunch with Baelish today at Le Gavroche," Ramsay scoffed, turning back to Sansa. Jon sensed this was some sort of betrayal on Baelish's part; he just didn't know what it was. Sansa seemed unshaken.

"I know you did." She smiled at him once more. "It's your choice, Ramsay—leave quietly or make a scene. But if you think you will be staying, you are mistaken."

"Alright." His blue eyes were too bright. He held his hands up in surrender. "We weren't going to stay anyway. We have a dinner party to go to; it's not 'til eight but it'll take our car _ages_ to get back to Knightsbridge." He paused meaningfully. "It's at the Freys'; we went there once, remember?"

"Not really."

She was still smiling. Jon felt like he couldn't breathe.

Ramsay at last turned to go, and they watched him silently. No one spoke until the door had shut and he was gone.

"I-I can't believe he would—" Margaery began to sputter. Arya's face was very red with unexpressed rage, her clenched fists shaking; Renly and Loras looked uncharacteristically baffled. The bald man joined them now—this was Varys, he supposed—joined by Baelish.

"You were right after all—Bolton _did_ grace us with an appearance. I suppose I owe you a drink, my dear Sansa," Varys informed her. Unlike everyone else, he looked almost delighted by the turn of events. Although he played a part in Sansa's line of defense, Jon immediately despised him. But he did not despise him nearly as much as he despised the man standing next to him—Baelish. Even without knowing that he had betrayed Sansa, Jon would have hated this man.

"Sansa," Baelish began in a low, soothing voice, as though speaking to an infant, "you must be so shaken—" he stepped in between Sansa and Jon, but Sansa abruptly stepped back.

"I'm really not, Petyr, but thank you," she said evenly. "Like Varys said, I knew he'd be here tonight." She offered Petyr Baelish that same chilling smile. "Did you have a nice lunch with Ramsay today? Le Gavroche is wonderful; Ramsay took me there several times."

Varys giggled.

"I do _so love_ when Sansa bares her teeth," he said dispassionately to the rest of them.

Jon and Arya stepped closer to Petyr Baelish, cornering him. Baelish offered Jon a smile that Jon did not return.

"You must be Jon Snow," he began. "I've heard so much—"

"Get out," Jon said softly. He met Baelish's swarthy, clever eyes and was filled with pure revulsion.

"Is it common for a woman's lawyer to have extravagant lunches with a man he obtained a court-ordered restraining order for?" Arya asked him. "I'm not really familiar with law."

Jon was staring Petyr down, even as Arya spoke. Behind him, Brienne, Gendry, Tormund, and Daenerys had joined the group. Sansa was floating above herself, watching the confrontation.

Jon's eyes, normally so warm, were freezing now as he looked at Petyr.

"Sansa," Petyr said now, and he attempted to turn back to her, but Jon reached out and gripped his arm.

Abruptly she was back in her own body, and rage blossomed once more, the same rage that had filled her earlier today in her office. Petyr wanted a scene; he wanted this to be ruined for her.

"Petyr, have you met Tycho?" She forced a smile; it felt like her lips were cracking. He would not ruin this. She would rather die than let him ruin this. No one was going to take this away from her. "He's a bigshot at Iron Bank; he's over there."

"You would _love_ Tycho," Margaery gushed. "You're both so …analytical. I'll introduce you." Margaery practically dragged Petyr off, and Varys followed with unexpected haste, apparently eager to follow this drama to its conclusion.

"Oh my _god,"_ Arya said now that they were free. She looked sharply at Sansa. "Literally the only thing stopping me from ripping Ramsay's fucking face off is that it'd be bad for business, and that didn't even occur to me until Marg stepped on my foot."

Sansa could only manage a weak laugh; she was light-headed.

"I'm not surprised. I knew he'd come. That's why I hired security guards for the gym tonight," she admitted. "He's got rather destructive tendencies when he doesn't get his way. I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to break into the gym tonight."

Everyone was staring at her in shock. "I'm fine," she insisted. "Seriously, guys. I knew this would happen. I've been preparing for this for months."

She couldn't bring herself to look at Jon. She took a long swig of her white wine and abruptly realized her hands were shaking. "Oh, I'll be right back," she said lightly. "The loo calls."

She pushed through her friends and back into the pub, and in the corridor next to the loos, she fell against the wall and let out a shaking breath. Then she tried to draw a breath again, and it wouldn't come. She tried once more. It still wouldn't come. She was inhaling, wildly, but none of it would go into her lungs. She felt like a balloon, rising, rising, rising too high, dangerously high; she felt like she might die.

Jon appeared in the narrow corridor, cast in relief from the dim overhead lighting. He had followed her. He slid in next to her; the corridor was so narrow that they were forced against each other.

"You're safe," he said gently, and she felt his strong hands grip her upper arms, holding her steady, as she continued to struggle to breathe.

It felt so good to have Jon's hands on her, in strict counterpoint to the belated horror currently coursing through her body.

"I-I don't know why it's hitting me like this," she stammered, unable to look at him. "I don't know why I can't stop shaking. I'm so stupid."

Jon's fingertips were soft on her neck, under her jaw. She knew her skin was clammy with cold sweat and she felt ashamed, but Jon didn't seem to notice.

"What's your name?" His voice was soft.

"Sansa Stark," she choked, her voice thick. "N-not Sansa Bolton. Sansa Stark."

"That's right. Tell me what you're seeing, hearing, smelling right now," he continued, and she dimly registered that this had to be some sort of technique. He was looking at his watch on his other hand now.

Her laughter was thick with unshed tears.

"I'm seeing someone brave, and gentle, and strong," she choked out sardonically.

She began laughing between useless breaths, though there was nothing funny about this. "That was how my father described the man he wanted me to marry," she began rambling. "He said I should be with _someone brave, and gentle, and strong_. And Ramsay was _none_ of those things. Why did I marry him? I'm so stupid."

"Sansa, focus on the question," he reminded her gently, his fingers still under her jaw. She couldn't look at him, could only focus on the fabric of his shirt. "What are you seeing, hearing, and smelling right now?"

"I'm seeing...grey suiting and a black shirt. I'm hearing the music from the pub, and the sounds from the kitchens, and people talking. I'm smelling...beer, and your skin, and my perfume."

Jon was still looking at his wristwatch, his fingers still on her neck, his lips moving as he counted voicelessly. Her shaking began to slow.

"And where are we right now?"

"At the Princess of Wales. For the party."

Her breathing was ragged but not so useless now, her shaking no longer violent. She was weak and dizzy. Then the pressure on her neck was gone, and she missed his touch already.

"There," he said softly. "Your heart rate's normal again."

She let go of his shirt, and finally met his warm, dark eyes. Her skin was tingling all over.

"Army trick?"

"Yeah, actually."

"That is pathetic," she scoffed, shaking her head in shame. "I've never been through a _war._ God." What must he think of her? "I'm so stupid. I'm so pathetic. This shouldn't be bothering me…" Her heart was beginning to hammer against her ribs again; everything seemed to be disappearing, even Jon…she was rising again…

"Sansa, listen to me." He was gripping her arms again. "There is nothing pathetic about you and what you've been through. And your father may have told you to marry someone brave, and gentle, and strong—or whatever it was you said—but he should have been telling you that _you're_ brave, and gentle, and strong."

There was a lump in her throat. "Um. I don't mean to criticize him. I'm sure he meant well," Jon added uncomfortably. His eyes were filled with worry, as he searched her face, searched her eyes. He was trying to read her, trying to understand her.

"Thank you."

He still had not let go of her. It was funny, how the thing that had finally made him touch her was the urge to help her, to hold her upright—not to bring her down, in lust or in violence. "Why did Ramsay recognize you?"

"Because this morning, before I met up with you, I went to his house and thought about doing something to him." He would not lie. "But I decided against it at the last minute."

This was important. This was everything. They were so close that she could see the individual lashes and the freckles in his dark warm eyes, she could see the scar from the night she'd saved him, she could feel the dark curl that had come free from his hair brushing against her forehead.

"Why?" she breathed.

He was so close. He was touching her. She couldn't think; she was rising up again, weightless again, but it was perfect. She had never been touched with such gentleness.

"Sansa—"

"—SANSA." Arya skidded into the corridor and smacked into them. She was holding Sansa's mobile phone. "The security guards just called. Ramsay's at the gym."

Jon tore away from her abruptly and pushed past Arya. Gendry and Tormund joined them now.

"I will neuter him," Gendry hissed, rolling up his sleeves.

"N-no," Sansa said, attempting to recover from how Jon had been looking at her just now. "It doesn't matter. The police will handle it—if we leave now, it will look bad."

"No, if _you_ leave, it will look bad," Jon corrected her. He pushed past Gendry, who immediately attempted to follow him, but Tormund held him back.

"You can't leave. I can," he gloated, and then was following Jon out the door.

Arya and Gendry turned to look at her pleadingly.

" _No,_ " Sansa said firmly. "We have to stay here. We have to do this right." Her voice was wobbling, but still strong. Arya crossed her arms over her chest, and sulkily kicked at the wall.

"I wanted to rip his face off," she pouted. "You never let me rip his face off." Gendry clapped a hand on her shoulder.

"We all do," he commiserated. "Granted, no one would do it with such skill and artistry as you—"

"—Stop. Get a grip, both of you," Sansa snapped, and they looked at her in surprise. "Ramsay can't do anything with security guards there—" Actually, she wasn't fully confident on this point, but they didn't need to know that, "—and we have investors to charm, remember?"

She looked squarely at Arya. "This is _your_ gym, more than anyone else's. You can't just run off and do what feels good right now. I'm honored that you want to hunt him down, but it'll only hurt us."

"Don't you want him to pay for what he did?" Arya demanded.

"Yes, I want him to pay, in cash, when I sue the pants off him," she retorted. "But we can't do that if I can't afford to hire a new lawyer, and I can't afford a new lawyer without the gym succeeding."

" _Fine,_ " Arya said dramatically, but there was a gleam in her eyes of something that Sansa didn't quite recognize.

It almost looked like respect. "Gendry, get your arse back in there and be charming," she ordered him. Gendry rolled his eyes and left the two sisters alone, and abruptly, Arya threw her arms around Sansa in perhaps the only hug they had ever exchanged.

Sansa bit her lip to try to not cry. She'd shed enough tears already. They parted and Arya smoothed her hair. "I hope you enjoyed that, because it's never happening again," she informed her, and they both began to laugh.

* * *

Jon sprinted down the wet road, Tormund on his heels.

He'd always been a fast runner. His mind was blissfully clear; he had one single objective. The gym soon loomed up ahead on the road—a man, presumably the security guard, lay unmoving on the ground. A sleek black car was illegally parked in front of the building, and Jon saw Ramsay rummaging in the boot of the car for something. The woman he'd been with was standing on the curb, waiting for something, and he handed her something long and silver that he'd taken from the car.

She took it—as Jon got closer, he realized it was a golf club—and turned around and smashed the closest window.

"Can't even do it himself, the tiny pecker," Tormund raged, echoing Jon's thoughts (mostly).

Ramsay turned at the sound of their voices and footfalls just as Jon reached him. With deadly efficiency, Jon skidded to a stop and grasped the front of Ramsay's suit, and then punched him and threw him to the ground.

But Ramsay was stronger than he'd expected; he turned them over and threw Jon's head against the bumper of the car. Jon was momentarily blinded by pain; he blindly swung out his leg and tripped Ramsay as he attempted to scramble to his feet, and Ramsay fell forward onto the sidewalk, a spray of blood from his nose turning the sidewalk dark. Jon registered Tormund struggling with the girl, but he couldn't care at the moment. He was going to kill Ramsay, and he knew exactly how he wanted to do it. He lunged after Ramsay, just as sirens began to fill the air.

"Fuck," the girl gasped, and she dropped the golf club and attempted to run, but Tormund caught her by her hair. Just as Jon grabbed hold of Ramsay again, she took off her shoe and flung it at him with unexpected accuracy; it hit the side of his head and distracted him long enough for Ramsay to break free and begin sprinting down the sidewalk. Jon immediately recovered and followed him.

Ramsay turned a corner into an alleyway and leapt over scattered rubbish bins; Jon tailed him swiftly, gaining on him with ease. Catching Ramsay was inevitable. This was an enemy he could destroy.

Ramsay made a wrong turn; they were at a dead end. Jon slowed to a walk, his breath clouding in the air, as he watched Ramsay realize his mistake. He was cornered now. There was nowhere else to run. Ramsay turned around again, desperate, then turned to face Jon head-on. He withdrew a gun from his suit jacket with shaking hands, his eyes wild and crazed, but even from Jon's vantage point he could tell that the safety was on.

"I know how to use this," Ramsay informed him wildly, his sweating, shaking hands attempting to find purchase on the gun long enough to flick the safety off.

"If you really did," Jon began, reaching him, "you wouldn't have had to tell me."

He knocked the gun out of Ramsay's hands; it skittered across the tarmac, out of reach.

Jon gripped Ramsay's suit jacket and stared into those cruel, terrified blue eyes.

But then the sirens filled the air once more. The police had followed them.

The alleyway glowed red and blue; Jon heard car doors slam. He couldn't look away from Ramsay's eyes. Ramsay's fear had dissolved, and it turned his stomach.

"This is an awful lot of work for one crappy fuck," he told him, his blood dribbling down over his mouth, spraying on Jon as he spoke. "I can tell you from experience—"

Jon could hear the footfalls of the police as they ventured closer; he knew they were speaking, calling out orders, but he couldn't hear them.

He wanted to kill Ramsay. This was an enemy he could destroy.

But Sansa had _already_ destroyed him.

"Maybe you'll get a better fuck in jail," Jon told him, and he let go just as two officers reached them and began to cuff Ramsay.

* * *

Sansa stood before the gym in shock. The rain was making her makeup run; her eyes were burning and stinging with it. It occurred to her that she probably looked insane, but that didn't matter anymore. She stared at the smashed facade of the gym.

"You knew he'd do it, too," Arya finally said. The flashing police lights reflected off the smashed shards of glass, making the ground seem to glitter blue, red, and silver.

"I was married to him, after all," she said softly. "I knew him really well."

The smashed windows had been taped off with plastic that sagged and billowed when cars drove by. Technically, it was a victory, but this would put a bad taste in people's mouths. Word would get around. She'd gotten Ramsay, but he'd gotten her too.

After Arya and the others had left, Sansa remained in front of the gym, with Jon standing beside her, his jeans torn in the knees and Ramsay's blood smeared on him.

She thought she might never be free of her past.

"You're like steel," Jon said suddenly. "No matter what happens to you, you never break."

"Really? Because I feel like I'm constantly falling apart," she retorted with a sardonic laugh. "Every time I do something, it fails. My shop failed. My marriage failed. Now this has failed, too."

"My wife died and I spent years hiding in the woods. I never even cleared out her things. I never talked about her death. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and I never got past it. When something bad happened to you, you picked up and moved on." He paused. "And this isn't failure—this is a broken window."

It felt like she was in that grove in Winterfell once more, rather than standing in the rain in Clapton.

"Does it bother you that I'm taller than you in heels?" she asked suddenly, finally turning to face him. In her stilettos she was a finger's width taller. Jon's lips twitched.

They were smiling at each other again. They could not help it.

"No," he said softly.

"Does it bother you that I care probably too much about shoes, and that I like clothes that most men don't get?"

"No." He looked like he was trying not to laugh.

"I've never had sex," she blurted out now. "I mean, I have, technically, but I don't think it's ever been proper sex. So I'm probably not very good at it."

This was her last, most painful confession. "I never wanted it when it happened, and it hurt. I always just wanted it to be over." She realized she was gripping Jon's hands in hers.

They stared at each other. Everything—the rain, the sound of the plastic billowing in the wind—faded. Jon was in perfect clarity before her. His eyes had never looked so dark, and his grip on her hands was almost painfully tight.

"That _does_ bother me," he said in a rush, his voice breaking, squeezing her hands tighter.

And he pulled her closer and kissed her, soft as snow brushing against her lips.

It was only in this moment that she realized she had never truly been kissed before, not in the way that she should have been kissed all along.

* * *

 _Author's note: This is the end, but I may write a follow-up chapter. It would be posted at my AO3, where this story is also posted. I hope you enjoyed reading it!_


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